Institutio Oratoria

For my own part, I have included both under the same generally accepted term, since we cannot imagine a speech without we also imagine a person to utter it. But when we lend a voice to things to which nature has denied it, we may soften down the figure in the way illustrated by the following passage:

For if my country, which is far dearer to me than life itself, if all Italy, if the whole commonwealth were to address me thus, 'Marcus Tullius, what dost thou?

[*](in Cat. T. xi. 27. ) A bolder figure of the same kind may be illustrated by the following:

Your country, Catiline, pleads with you thus, and though she utters never a word, cries to you, 'For not a few years past no crime has come to pass save through your doing!'

[*](in Cat. I. vii. 18. )

It is also convenient at times to pretend that we have before our eyes the images of things, persons or utterances, or to marvel that the same is not the case with our adversaries or the judges; it is with this design that we use phrases such as

It seems to me,

or

Does it not seem to you?

But such devices make a great demand on our powers of eloquence. For with things which are false and incredible by nature there are but two alternatives: either they will move our hearers with exceptional force because they are beyond the truth, or they will be regarded as empty nothings because they are not the truth.

But we may introduce not only imaginary sayings, but imaginary writings as well, as is done by Asinius in his defence of Liburnia:

Let my mother, who was the object of my love and my delight, who lived for me and gave me life twice in one day [*]( The speech being lost, the allusion in bis — dedit is unintelligible. ) (and so on) inherit nought of my property.

This is in itself a figure, and is doubly so whenever, as in the present case, it imitates a document produced by the opposing party.

For a will had been read out by the prosecution, in the following form:

Let Publius Novanius Gallio, to whom as my benefactor I will and owe all that is good, as a testimony to the great affection which he has borne me (then follow other details) be my heir.

In this case the figure borders on parody, a name drawn from songs sung in imitation of others, but employed by an abuse of language to designate imitation in verse or prose.