Institutio Oratoria

It is but a short step from synecdocheè to metonymy, which consists in the substitution of one name for another, and, as Cicero [*](Orat. xxvii. 93. ) tells us, is called hypallage by the rhetoricians. These devices are employed to indicate an invention by substituting the name of

the inventor, or a possession by substituting the name of the possessor. Virgil, for example, writes: [*](Aen. i. 177. )

1. Ceres by water spoiled,

and Horace:

1. Neptune admitted to the land
2. Protects the fleets from blasts of Aquilo.

A. P. 63.

If, however, the process is reversed, the effect is harsh.

But it is important to enquire to what extent tropes of this kind should be employed by the orator. For though we often hear

Vulcan

used for fire and to say vario Marte pugnatum est for

they fought with varying success

is elegant and idiomatic, while Venus is a more decent expression than coitus, it would be too bold for the severe style demanded in the courts to speak of Liber and Ceres when we mean bread and wine. Again, while usage permits us to substitute that which contains for that which is contained, as in phrases such as

civilised cities,

or

a cup was drunk to the lees,

or

a happy age,

the converse procedure would rarely be ventured on by any save a poet: take, for example, the phrase:

1. Ucalegon burns next.

Aen. ii. 311.

It is, however, perhaps more permissible to describe what is possessed by reference to its possessor, as, for example, to say of a man whose estate is being squandered,

the man is being eaten up.

Of this form there are innumerable species.

For example, we say

sixty thousand men were slain by Hannibal at Cannae,

and speak of

Virgil

when we mean

Virgil's poems

; again, we say that supplies have

come,

when they have been

brought,

that a

sacrilege,

and not a

sacrilegious man

has been detected, and that a man possesses a knowledge of

arms,

not of

the art of arms.