Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

that is the transference of the meaning of one word to another. It has, however, greater elegance when it is employed to distinguish the exact meanings of things, as in the following example:

This curse to the state could be repressed for a time, but not suppressed for ever;

[*](Cat. L xii. 30. ) the same is true when the meaning of verbs is reversed by a change in the preposition with which they are compounded: for example, Non emissus ex urbe, sed immissus in urbem esse videatur. [*](Cat. I. 11. 27: He would seem not so much to have been sent out from, but to have been launched against the city. ) The effect is better still and more emphatic when our pleasure is derived both from the figurative form and the excellence of the sense, as in the following instance: emit morte immortalitatem. [*](By his death he purchased undying fame.)

A more trivial effect is produced by the following: Non Pisonum, sed pistorum, [*](Not of the Pisos, but of the bakers.) and Ex oratore arator, [*](Phil III. ix. 22: Orator turned ploughman. ) while phrases such as Ne patres conscripti videantur circumscripti, [*]( Auct. ad Herenn, iv. 22. That the conscript fathers be not cheated. ) or raro evenit, sed vehenenter venit, [*](Meaning uncertain.) are the worst of all. It does, however, sometimes happen that a bold and vigorous conception may derive a certain charm from the contrast between two words not dissimilar in sound.