Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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.
v7-9 p.341
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.