Institutio Oratoria

Some include the clear and vivid description of places under the same heading, while others call it topography. I have found some who speak of irony as dissimulation, but, in view of the fact that this latter name

In the first place, the trope is franker in its meaning, and, despite the fact that it implies something other than it says, makes no pretence about it. For the context as a rule is perfectly clear, as, for example, in the following passage from the Catilinarian orations. [*](I. viii. 19.)

Rejected by him, you migrated to your boon-companion, that excellent gentleman Metellus.

But in the figurative form of irony the speaker disguises his entire meaning, the disguise being apparent rather than confessed. For in the trope the conflict is purely verbal, while in the figure the meaning, and sometimes the whole aspect of our case, conflicts with the language and the tone of voice adopted; nay, a man's whole life may be coloured with irony, as was the case with Socrates, who was called an ironist because he assumed the role of an ignorant man lost in wonder at the wisdom of others. Thus, as continued metaphor develops into allegory, so a sustained series of tropes develops into this figure.

There are, however, certain kinds of this figure which have no connexion with tropes. In the first place, there is the figure which derives its name from negation and is called by some ἀντίφρασις. Here is an example:

I will not plead against you according to the rigour

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of the law, I will not press the point which I should perhaps be able to make good

Why should I mention his decrees, his acts of plunder, his acquisition, whether by cession or by force, of certain inheritances?

I say nothing of the first wrong inflicted by his lust

I do not even propose to produce the evidence given concerning the 600,000 sesterces