Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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.

When, however, the transposition is confined to two words only, it is called anastrophe, that is, a reversal of order. This occurs in everyday

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speech in mecum and secure, while in orators and historians we meet with it in the phrase quibus de rebus. It is the transposition of a word to some distance from its original place, in order to secure an ornamental effect, that is strictly called hyperbaton: the following passage will provide an example: animadverti, indices, omnem accusatoris orationenm in duas divisam esse partes. [*](Cic. pro Cluent. i. 1. ) (
I noted, gentlemen, that the speech of the accuser was divided into two parts.
) In this case the strictly correct order would be in duas partes divisam esse, but this would have been harsh and ugly.

The poets even go so far as to secure this effect by the division of words, as in the line:

  1. Hyperboreo septem subiecta trioni [*](Georg. iii. 381. )
  2. (
    Under the Hyperborean Wain
    ),
a licence wholly inadmissible in oratory. Still there is good reason for calling such a transposition a trope, since the meaning is not complete until the two words have been put together.

On the other hand, when the transposition makes no alteration in the sense, and merely produces a variation in the structure, it is rather to be called a verbal figure, as indeed many authorities have held. Of the faults resulting from long or confused hyperbata have spoken in the appropriate place. [*](VIII. ii. 14.) I have kept hyperbole to the last, on the ground of its boldness. It means an elegant straining of the truth, and may be employed indifferently for exaggeration or attenuation. It can be used in various ways.