Institutio Oratoria

The remaining tropes are employed solely to adorn and enhance our style without any reference to the meaning. For the epithet, of which the correct translation is appositum, though some call it sequens,

is clearly an ornament. Poets employ it with special frequency and freedom, since for them it is sufficient that the epithet should suit the word to which it is applied: consequently we shall not blame them when they speak of

white teeth

or

liquid wine.

[*](Georg. III. 364. ) But in oratory an epithet is redundant unless it has some point. Now it will only have point when it adds something to the meaning, as for instance in the following:

O abominable crime, O hideous lust!

But its decorative effect is greatest when it is metaphorical, as in the phrases

unbridled greed

[*]( Cic. in Cat. I. x. 25. ) or

those mad piles of masonry.

[*]( Pro Mil. xx. 53. ) The epithet is generally made into a trope by the addition of something to it, as when Virgil speaks of

disgraceful poverty

or

sad old age.

[*](Aen. vi. 276 and 275. Here the addition is metonymy, turpis and tristis both substituting effect in place of cause: cp. § 27. ) But the nature of this form of embellishment is such that, while style is bare and inelegant without any epithets at all, it is overloaded when a large number are employed.

For then it becomes long-winded and cumbrous, in fact you might compare it to an army with as many camp-followers as soldiers, an army, that is to say, which has doubled its numbers without doubling its strength. None the less, not merely single epithets are employed, but we may find a number of them together, as in the following passage from Virgil: [*](Aen. iii. 475. I have translated 476 ( cura deum, bis Pergameis erepte ruinis ) as well to bring out Quintilian's meaning. Quintilian assumes the rest of quotation to be known. )

1. Anchises, worthy deigned
2. Of Venus' glorious bed, [beloved of heaven,
3. Twice rescued from the wreck of Pergamum.]

Be this as it may, two epithets directly attached to one noun are unbecoming even in verse. There are some writers who refuse to regard an epithet as a trope, on the ground that it involves no change. It

is not always a trope, but if separated from the word to which it belongs, it has a significance of its own and forms an antonomasia. For if you say,

The man who destroyed Numantia and Carthage,

it will be an antonomasia, whereas, if you add the word

Scipio,

the phrase will be an epithet. An epithet therefore cannot stand by itself.

Allegory, which is translated in Latin by inversio, either presents one thing in words and another in meaning, or else something absolutely opposed to the meaning of the words. The first type is generally produced by a series of metaphors. Take as an example:

1. O ship, new waves will bear thee back to sea.
2. What dost thou? Make the haven, come what may,

Hor. Od. i. xiv. 1.

and the rest of the ode, in which Horace represents the state under the semblance of a ship, the civil wars as tempests, and peace and good-will as the haven.

Such, again, is the claim of Lucretius: [*](Lucr. IV. 1. )

1. Pierian fields I range untrod by man,

and such again the passage where Virgil says,

1. But now
2. A mighty length of plain we have travelled o'er;
3. 'Tis time to loose our horses' steaming necks.

Georg. II. 541.

On the other hand, in the Bucolics [*](Buc. IX. 7. ) he introduces an allegory without any metaphor:

1. Truth, I had heard
2. Your loved Menalcas by his songs had saved
3. All those fair acres, where the hills begin
4. To sink and droop their ridge with easy slope
5. Down to the waterside and that old beech
6. With splintered crest.

For in this passage, with the exception of the proper name, the words bear no more than their literal meaning. But the name does not simply denote the shepherd Menalcas, but is a pseudonym for Virgil himself. Oratory makes frequent use of such allegory, but generally with this modification, that there is an admixture of plain speaking. We get allegory pure and unadulterated in the following passage of Cicero: [*](From an unknown speech.)

What I marvel at and complain of is this, that there should exist any man so set on destroying his enemy as to scuttle the ship on which he himself is sailing.