Institutio Oratoria

Aposiopesis, which Cicero [*](See quotation in IX. i. 31.) calls reticentia, Celsus obticentia, and some interruptio, is used to indicate passion or anger, as in the line: [*](Aen. i. 135. Neptune rebukes the winds for raising a storm, but breaks off without actually saying what he would do to them. )

1. Whom I—
2. But better first these billows to assuage.

Or it may serve to give an impression of anxiety or scruple, as in the following: [*]( Now frequently inserted in pro Mil. xii. 33. But it is quite possible that the words formed part of the speech actually delivered, and do not belong to the existing speech, from the MSS. from which they are absent. The law proposed to give freedmen the right to vote in all thirty-five tribes and not as before in the four city-tribes only. )

Would he have dared to mention this law of which Clodius boasts he was the author, while Milo was alive, I will not say was consul? For as regards all of us—I do not dare to complete the sentence.

There is a similar instance in the exordium of Demosthenes' speech in defence of Ctesiphon. [*]( § 3. ἀλλ᾽ ἐμοὶ—οὐ βούλομαι δὲ δυσχερὲς εἰπεῖν οὐδέν. )

Again it may be employed as a means of transition, as, for example, [*]( From thepro Cornelio. )

Cominius, however— nay, pardon me, gentlemen.

This last instance also involves digression, if indeed digression is to be counted among figures, since some authorities regard it as forming one of the parts of a speech. [*](cp. xv. iii. 12. ) For at this point the orator diverges to sing the praises of Gnaeus Pompeius, which he might have done without any recourse to aposiopesis.