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 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.