Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

where he cries,

What was that sword of yours doing, Tubero, the sword you drew on the field of Pharsalus? Against whose body did you aim its point? What meant those arms you bore?
Sometimes the effect is doubled, as in Virgil's.
  1. And with venom arm the steel.
Aen. ix. 773.
For both
to arm the steel
and
to arm with venom
are metaphors.

These four kinds of metaphor are further subdivided into a number of species, such as transference from rational beings to rational and from irrational to irrational and the reverse, in which the method is the same, and finally from the whole to its parts and from the parts to the whole. But I am not now teaching boys: my readers are old enough to discover the species for themselves when once they have been given the genus.

While a temperate and timely use of metaphor is

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a real adornment to style, on the other hand, its frequent use serves merely to obscure our language and weary our audience, while if we introduce them in one continuous series, our language will become allegorical and enigmatic. There are also certain metaphors which fail from meanness, such as that of which I spoke above [*](See VIII. iii. 48.) :
  1. There is a rocky wart upon the mountain's
  2. brow.
or they may even be coarse. For it does not follow that because Cicero was perfectly justified in talking of
the sink of the state,
[*]( In Cat. I. v. 12. ) when he desired to indicate the foulness of certain men, we can approve the following passage from an ancient orator:
You have lanced the boils of the state.

Indeed Cicero [*](De Or. iii. xli. 164. ) himself has demonstrated in the most admirable manner how important it is to avoid grossness in metaphor, such as is revealed by the following examples, which he quotes:—

The state was gelded by the death of Africanus,
or
Glaucia, the excrement of the senate-house.

He also points out that a metaphor must not be too great for its subject or, as is more frequently the case, too little, and that it must not be inappropriate. Anyone who realises that these are faults, will be able to detect instances of them only too frequently. But excess in the use of metaphor is also a fault, more especially if they are of the same species.

Metaphors may also be harsh, that is, far-fetched, as in phrases like

the snows of the head
or
  1. Jove with white snow the wintry Alps bespewed.
From Furius, an old epic poet of the second century (not Furius Bibaculus), cp. Hor. S. ii. v. 11.
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The worst errors of all, however, originate in the fact that some authors regard it as permissible to use even in prose any metaphors that are allowed to poets, in spite of the fact that tile latter aim solely at pleasing their readers and are compelled in many cases to employ metaphor by sheer metrical necessity.

For my own part I should not regard a phrase like

the shepherd of the people
as admissible in pleading, although it has the authority of Homer, nor would I venture to say that winged creatures
swim through the air,
despite the fact that this metaphor has been most effectively employed by Virgil to describe the flight of bees and of Daedalus.1 For metaphor should always either occupy a place already vacant, or if it fills the room of something else, should be more impressive than that which it displaces.

What I have said above applies perhaps with even greater force to synecdocheè. For while metaphor is designed to move the feelings, give special distinction to things and place them vividly before the eye, synecdocheè has the power to give variety to our language by making us realise many things from one, the whole from a part, the genus from a species, things which follow from things which have preceded; or, on the other hand, the whole procedure may be reversed. It may, however, be more freely employed by poets than by orators.

For while in prose it is perfectly correct to use macro, the point, for the whole sword, and tectum, roof, for a whole house, we may not employ puppis, stern, to describe a ship, nor abies, fir, to describe planks; and again, though ferrunm, the steel, may be used to indicate a sword, quadrupes cannot be used in the

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sense of horse. It is where numbers are concerned that synecdocheè can be most freely employed in prose. For example, Livy frequently says,
The Roman won the day,
when he means that the Romans were victorious; on the other hand, Cicero in a letter to Brutus [*](This letter is lost.) says,
We have imposed on the people and are regarded as orators,
when he is speaking of himself alone.