Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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.

We may say more than the actual facts, as when Cicero says, [*](Phil. II. xxv. 63. ) "He vomited and filled his lap and the whole tribunal with fragments of food, or when Virgil speaks of

  1. win rocks that threaten heaven.
Aen. i. 162.
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Again, we may exalt our theme by the use of simile, as in the phrase:
  1. Thou wouldst have deemed
  2. That Cyclad isles uprooted swam the deep.
Aen. viii. 691.

Or we may produce the same result by introducing a comparison, as in the phrase:

  1. Swifter than the levin's wings;
Aen. v. 319.
or by the use of indications, as in the lines:
  1. She would fly
  2. Even o'er the tops of the unsickled corn,
  3. Nor as she ran would bruise the tender ears.
Aen. vii. 808.
Or we may employ a metaphor, as the verb to fly is employed in the passage just quoted.

Sometimes, again, one hyperbole may be heightened by the addition of another, as when Cicero in denouncing Antony says: [*]( Phil. II. xxvii. 67. )

What Charybdis was ever so voracious? Charybdis, do I say? Nay, if Charybdis ever existed, she was but a single monster. By heaven, even Ocean's self, methinks, could scarce have engulfed so many things, so widely scattered in such distant places, in such a twinkling of the eye.

I think, too, that I am right in saying that I noted a brilliant example of the same kind in the Hymns [*](A lost work.) of Pindar, the prince of lyric poets. For when he describes the onslaught made by Hercules upon the Meropes, the legendary inhabitants of the island of Cos, he speaks of the hero as like not to fire, winds or sea, but to the thunderbolt, making the latter the only true equivalent of his speed and power, the former being treated as quite inadequate.

Cicero has imitated his method in the following

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passage from the Verrines: [*](v. vi. 145.)
After long lapse of years the Sicilians saw dwelling in their midst, not a second Dionysius or Phalaris (for that island has produced many a cruel tyrant in years gone by), but a new monster with all the old ferocity once familiar to those regions. For, to my thinking, neither Scylla nor Charybdis were ever such foes as he to the ships that sailed those same narrow seas.