Institutio Oratoria

The same consideration applies to correction. For correction emends, where hesitation expresses a doubt. Some have even held that it applies to personification as well; they think, for example, that Avarice is the mother of cruelly, Sallust's O Romulus of Arpinum in his speech against Cicero, and the Thriasian Oedipus [*]( An allusion to some inhabitant of the Athenian village of Thria. ) of Menander are figures of speech. All these points have been discussed in full detail by those who have not given this subject merely incidental treatment as a portion of a larger theme, but have devoted whole books to the discussion of the topic: I allude to writers such as Caecilius, Dionysius, Rutilius, Cornificius, Visellius and not a few others, although there are living authors who will be no less famous than they.

Now though I am ready to admit that more figures of speech may perhaps be discovered by certain writers, I cannot agree that such figures are better than those which have been laid down by high authorities. Above all I would point out that Cicero has included a number of figures in the third book of the de Oratore, [*](See IX. i. 26.) which in his later work, the Orator, [*](See IX. i. 37.) he has omitted, thereby seeming to indicate that he condemned them. Some of these are figures of thought rather than of speech, such as meiosis, the introduction of the unexpected, imagery, answering our own questions, digression, permission, [*](See IX. ii. 25.) arguments drawn from opposites (for I suppose that by

such as arrangement, distinction by headings, and circumscription, whether this latter term be intended to signify the concise expression of thought or definition, which is actually regarded by Cornificius and Rutilius as a figure of speech. With regard to the elegant transposition of words, that is, hyperbaton, which Caecilius also thinks is a figure, I have included it among tropes. As for mutation [*](Immutatio in Cicero (IX. i. 35) seems to mean metonymy or ὑπαλλαγή (see Orator, xxvii. 92): The ἀλλοίωσις of Rutilius (i. 2) is however differentiation. )

of the kind which Rutilius calls ἀλλοίωσις its function is to point out the differences between men, things and deeds: if it is used on an extended scale, it is not a figure, if on a narrower scale, it is mere antithesis, while if it is intended to mean hypallage, enough has already been said on the subject. [*](VIII. 6. 23.)

Again what sort of a figure is this addition of a reason, for what is advanced, which Rutilius calls αἰτιολογία ? [*](ii. 19.) It may also be doubted whether the assignment of a reason for each distinct statement, with which Rutilius [*](Opening of Book I.) opens his discussion of figures, is really a figure.

He calls it προσαπόδοσις and states [*]( The subj. servetur seems to indicate indirect speech. ) that strictly it applies to a number of propositions, since the reason is either attached to each proposition separately, as in the following passage from Gaius Antonius: [*](Elected consul with Cicero for 63 B.C.)

But I do not fear him as an accuser, for I am innocent; I do not dread him as a rival candidate, for I am Antonius; I do not expect to see him consul, for he is Cicero

or, after two or three propositions have been stated, the reasons for them may be given continuously in the same order, as for example in the

For it is better to rule no man than to be the slave to any man: since one may live with honour without ruling, whereas life is no life for the slave.