Institutio Oratoria

not infrequently possible to give special significance to a word by placing it at the close of the sentence and thereby stamping and impressing it on the mind of the hearer, whereas if it were placed in the middle of the sentence, it would remain unnoticed, escape the attention and be obscured by its surroundings; the following passage from Cicero will illustrate what I mean: ut tibi necesse esset in conspectu populi Romani vomere postridie.

[*](Phil. II. xxv. 63. That you were compelled to vomit the next day in the presence of the Roman people. ) Transfer the last word to some other position and the effect will be decreased. For the whole passage is made to converge to a point at the end; the disgraceful circumstance of his being forced to vomit has been mentioned and the audience expect nothing more, when the orator adds yet a further revolting feature of the case, namely that he was still unable to retain his food the day after the carouse.

Domitius Afer was in the habit of transferring words at the cadence of the sentence solely for the purpose of harshening his rhythm, more especially in his exordia, as, for example, in his defence of Cloatilla, where he says gratias again continuo, [*](I will thank you at once.) and in his defence of Laelia, where he says, eis utrisque apud te iudicem periclitatur Laelia. [*]( Owing to both of these circumstances Laelia runs the risk of betng condemned with you for judge. ) To such an extent did he avoid the voluptuous effect of soft and delicate rhythm, that he actually interposed obstacles to break the natural harmonies of his language.

There is a further drawback resulting from the faulty arrangement of words, with which we are all familiar, namely, that it leads to ambiguity. The above remarks will, I think, suffice as a brief summary of the points which require notice in connexion with order. If the order is

I will follow the natural order and will begin by pointing out that there are some blemishes so obvious that even the uneducated regard them as worthy of censure; I refer to occasions when two consecutive words form some unseemly expression by the coalescence of the last syllable of the first word and the first of the second. [*](cp. VIII. 45. ) Again, there are occasions when vowels clash. When this happens, the language is broken by gaps and interstices and seems to labour. The most unpleasing effects of sound will be produced by the juxtaposition of the same long vowels, while the worst hiatus occurs between vowels which are pronounced hollow- or open-mouthed. [*](i.e. A, O, U. )

E has a flatter, i a narrower sound, and consequently such blemishes are less noticeable where they are concerned. It is a less serious fault to place short vowels after long, a statement which applies even more strongly to placing short vowels before long. But the least unsatisfactory combination is that of two short vowels. And in all conjunctions of vowels, the resulting sound will be proportionately soft or harsh according as they resemble or differ from each other in the method of utterance.

On the other hand, hiatus is not to be regarded as so very terrible a crime: in fact I do not know which is the worse fault in this connexion, carelessness or a pedantic