Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Under the same class of figure falls that of addition, which, although the words added may be strictly superfluous, may still be far from inelegant. Take, for example,

  1. nam neque Parnasi vobis iuga, nam neque Pindi,
Ecl. x. 11: [*](For neither did Parnassus slope, nor yet/ The slopes of Pindus make delay for you.)
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where the second nam might be omitted. And we find in Horace, [*]( Hor. Od. I. xii. 40. And Fabricius, him and Cato with locks unshorn. )
  1. Fabriciumcque,
  2. hunc et intonsis Curium capillis.
Similarly, words are omitted, a device which may be either a blemish or a figure, according to the context. The following is an example:
  1. accede ad ignen, iam calesces plus satis;
Ter. Eun. I. ii. 5. [*](Draw near the fire and you shall be more than warm enough.)
for the full phrase would be plus quam satis. There is, however, another form of omission which requires treatment at greater length. [*]( The sense is obscure. The words are either an interpolation or illustrative matter has been lost. )

We frequently use the comparative for the positive, as, for example, when a man speaks of himself as being infirmior (rather indisposed). Sometimes we join two comparatives, as in the following passage [*](Cat. I. ii. 5. If I were to give orders that you should he apprehended and put to death, I think I should have reason to fear that all good citizens would regard my action as too tardy rather than that anyone would assert that it was too cruel. ) : si te, Catilina, comprehend, si interfici iussero, credo erit verendum mihi, ne non potius hoc ones boni serius a me qam quisquam crudelius factum esse dicat.

There are also figures like the following, which, though far from being solecisms, alter the number and are also usually included among tropes. We may speak of a single thing in the plural, as in the following instance [*](Georg. ii. 541. ) :

  1. But we have travelled o'er a boundless space;
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Or we may speak of the plural in the singular, as in the following case [*](Georg. iii. 346. ) :
  1. Like the fierce Roman in his country's arms.

There are others which belong to a diflfrent species, but the same genus, such as

  1. Nor let thy vineyards slope toward the west,
Georg. ii. 298.
or
  1. In that hour
  2. Be it not mine beneath the open sky
  3. To court soft sleep nor on the forest ridge
  4. Amid the grass to lie.
Georg. iii. 435.
For in the first of these passages he is not advising some other person, nor exhorting himself in the second, his advice in both passages being meant for all. Sometimes, again, we speak of ourselves as though we were referring to others, as in phrases like,
Servius asserts, Tullius denies it.
[*](i. e. I, Cicero, deny it. Halm suggests that the passage comes from an unpublished portion of his speech in defence of Murena. cp. Pro Mur. xxvii. 57. )

At other times we speak in the first person instead of in another, or substitute one person for another. Both devices are employed together in the pro Caecina, where Cicero, addressing Piso, the counsel for the prosecution, says,

You asserted that you reinstated me: I deny that you did so in accordance with the praetor's edict.
[*](pro Caec. xxix. 82. ) The actual truth is that it was Aebutius who asserted that he had reinstated the defendant, and Caecina who denied that he had been restored in accordance with the praetor's edict. We may note also a further figure of speech in the contracted dixti, which has dropped one of its syllables.

The following also may be

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regarded as belonging to the same genus. The first is called interpositio or interclusio by us, and parenthesis or paremptosis by the Greeks, and consists in the interruption of the continuous flow of our language by the insertion of some remark. The following is an example: ego cum te (mecum enim saepissime loquilur ) patriae reddidissem. [*](pro Mil. xxxiv. 94. When I had restored you—for he often enters into conversation with me—to your country. )

To this they add hyperbaton, [*](See VIII. vi. 67.) which they refuse to include among tropes. A second figure of this kind is one closely resembling the figure of thought known as apostrophe, [*](See IX. ii. 38.) but differing in this respect, that it changes the form of the language and not the sense. The following will illustrate my meaning:

  1. The Decii too,
  2. The Marii and Camilli, names of might,
  3. The Scipios, stubborn warriors, aye, and thee,
  4. Great Caesar.
Georg. ii. 169. (Rhoades' translation).

There is a still more striking example in the passage describing the death of Polydorus [*](Aen. iii. 55. ) :

  1. All faith he brake and Polydorus slew
  2. Seizing his gold by force. Curst greed of gold,
  3. To what wilt thou not drive the hearts of men?
'Those terminologists who delight in subtle distinctions call the last figure μετάβασις (transition), and hold that it may be employed in yet another way, as in Dido's
  1. What do I say? Where am I?
Aen. iv. 595.

Virgil has combined apostrollphe and parenthesis in the well-known passage: [*](Aen. viii. 642. )

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  1. Next Mettus the swift cars asunder tore,
  2. (Better, false Alban, hadst thou kept thy troth!)
  3. And Tullus dragged the traitors' mangled limbs. . .
These figures and the like, which consist in change,