Institutio Oratoria

Further, we may employ allegory, and disguise bitter taunts in gentle words I y way of wit, or we may indicate our meaning by saying exactly the contrary or. . . [*]( The passage is hopelessly corrupt. The concluding portion of the sentence must have referred to the use of proverbs, of which it may have contained an example. This is clear from the next sentence. Sarcasm, urbane wit and contradiction are covered by the first three clauses, but there has been no allusion to proverbs such as παροιμία demands. ) If the Greek names for these

There are, however, some writers who deny that these are species of allegory, and assert that they are actually tropes in themselves: for they argue shrewdly that allegory involves an element of obscurity, whereas in all these cases our meaning is perfectly obvious. To this may be added the fact that when a genus is divided into species, it ceases to have any peculiar properties of its own: for example, we may divide tree into its species, pine, olive, cypress, etc., leaving it no properties of its own, whereas allegory always has some property peculiar to itself. The only explanation of this fact is that it is itself a species. But this, of course, is a matter of indifference to those that use it.

To these the Greeks add μυκτηρισμός or mockery under the thinnest of disguises. When we use a number of words to describe something for which one, or at any rate only a few words of description would suffice, it is called periphrasis, that is, a circuitous mode of speech. It is sometimes necessary, being of special service when it conceals something which would be indecent, if expressed in so many words: compare the phrase

To meet the demands of nature

But at times it is employed solely for decorative effect, a practice most frequent among the poets:

1. Now was the time
2. When the first sleep to weary mortals comes
3. Stealing its way, the sweetest boon of heaven.

Aen. ii. 268.

Still it is far from uncommon even in oratory, though

Again, hyperbaton, that is, the transposition of a word, is often demanded by the structure of the sentence and the claims of elegance, and is consequently counted among the ornaments of style. For our language would often be harsh, rough, limp or disjointed, if the words were always arranged in their natural order and attached each to each just as they occur, despite the fact that there is no real bond of union. Consequently some words require to be postponed, others to be anticipated, each being set in its appropriate place.

For we are like those who build a wall of unhewn stone: we cannot hew or polish our words in order to make them fit more compactly, and so we must take them as they are and choose suitable positions for them.

Further, it is impossible to make our prose rhythmical except by artistic alterations in the order of words, and the reason why those four words in which Plato [*]( At the beginning of the Repiblic. κατέβην χφὲς εἰς Πειραιᾶ. ) in the noblest of his works states that he had gone down to the Piraeus were found written in a number of different orders upon his wax tablets, was simply that he desired to make the rhythm as perfect as possible.