Book 8

THE observations contained in the preceding five books approximately cover the method of invention and the arrangement of the material thus provided. It is absolutely necessary to acquire a thorough knowledge of this method in all its details, if we desire to become accomplished orators, but a simpler and briefer course of instruction is more suitable for beginners.

For they tend either to be deterred from study by the difficulties of so detailed and complicated a course, or lose heart at having to attempt tasks of such difficulty just at the very period when their minds need special nourishment and a more attractive form of diet, or think that when they have learned this much and no more, they are fully equipped for the tasks of eloquence, or finally, regarding themselves as fettered by certain fixed laws of oratory, shrink from making any effort on their own initiative.

Consequently, it has been held that those who have exercised the greatest care in writing text-books of rhetoric have been the furthest removed from genuine eloquence. Still, it is absolutely necessary to point out to beginners the road which they should follow, though this road must be smooth and easy not merely to enter, but to indicate. Consequently, our skilful instructor should select all that is best in the various writers on the subject and content himself for the moment with imparting those precepts of which he approves, without wasting time over the refutation of those which he does not approve. For thus your pupils will follow where you lead.

Later, as they acquire strength in speaking, their learning will grow in proportion. To begin with, they may be allowed to think that there is no other road than that on which we have set their feet, and it may be left to time to teach them what is actually the best. It is true that writers on rhetoric have, by the pertinacity with which they have defended their opinions, made the principles of the science which they profess somewhat complicated; but these principles are in reality neither obscure nor hard to understand.

Consequently, if we regard the treatment of the art as a whole, it is harder to decide what we should teach than to teach it, once the decision has been made. Above all, in the two departments which I have mentioned, the necessary rules are but few in number, and if the pupil gives them ready acceptance, he will find that the path to further accomplishment presents no difficulty.

I have, it is true, already expended much labour on this portion of my task; for I desired to make it clear that rhetoric is the science of speaking well, that it is useful, and further, that it is an art and a virtue. I wished also to show that its subject matter consists of everything on which an orator may be called to speak, and is, as a rule, to be found in three classes of oratory, demonstrative, deliberative, and forensic; that every speech is composed of matter and words, and that as regards matter we must study invention, as regards words, style, and as regards both, arrangement, all of which it is the task of memory to retain and delivery to render attractive.

I attempted to show that the duty of the orator is composed of instructing, moving and delighting his hearers, statement of facts and argument falling under the head of instruction, while emotional appeals are concerned with moving the audience and, although they may be employed throughout the case, are most effective at the beginning and end. As to the element of charm, I pointed out that, though it may reside both in facts and words, its special sphere is that of style.

I observed that there are two kinds of questions, the one indefinite, the other definite, and involving the consideration of persons and circumstances of time and place; further, that whatever our subject matter, there are three questions which we must ask, is it? what is it? and of what kind is it? To this I added that demonstrative oratory consists of praise and denunciation, and that in this connexion we must consider not merely the acts actually performed by the person of whom we were speaking, but what happened after his death. This task I showed to be concerned solely with what is honourable or expedient.

I remarked that in deliberative oratory there is a third department as well which depends on conjecture, for we have to consider whether the subject of deliberation is possible or likely to happen. At this point I emphasised the importance of considering who it is that is speaking, before whom he is speaking, and what he says. As regards forensic cases, I demonstrated that some turn on one point of dispute, others on several, and that whereas in some cases it is the attack, in others in is the defence that determines the basis; that every defence rests on denial, which is of two kinds, since we may either deny that the act was committed or that its nature was that alleged, while it further consists of justification and technical pleas to show that the action cannot stand.

I proceeded to show that questions must turn either on something written or something done: in the latter case we have to consider the truth of the facts together with their special character and quality; in the former we consider the meaning or the intention of the words, with reference to which we usually examine the nature of all cases, criminal or civil, which fall under the heads of the letter and intention, the syllogism, ambiguity or contrary lairs.

I went on to point out that in all forensic cases the speech consists of five parts, the exordium designed to conciliate the audience, the statement of facts designed to instruct him, the proof which confirms our own propositions, the refutation which overthrows the arguments of our opponents, and the peroration which either refreshes the memory of our hearers or plays upon their emotions.

I then dealt with the sources of arguments and emotion, and indicated the means by which the judges should be excited, placated, or amused. Finally I demonstrated the method of division. But I would ask that the student who is really desirous of learning should believe that there are also a variety of subjects with regard to which nature itself should provide much of the requisite knowledge without any assistance from formal teaching, so that the precepts of which I have spoken may be regarded not so much as having been discovered by the professors of rhetoric as having been noted by them when they presented themselves.

The points which follow require greater care and industry. For I have now to discuss the theory of style, a subject which, as all orators agree, presents the greatest difficulty. For Marcus Antonius, whom I mentioned above, states that lie has seen many good, but no really eloquent speakers, and holds that, while to be a good speaker it is sufficient to say what is necessary, only the really eloquent speaker can do this in ornate and appropriate language.

And if this excellence was to be found in no orator up to his own day, and not even in himself or Lucius Crassus, we may regard it as certain that the reason why they and their predecessors lacked this gift was its extreme difficulty of acquisition. Again, Cicero holds that, while invention and arrangement are within the reach of any man of good sense, eloquence belongs to the orator alone, and consequently it was on the rules for the cultivation of eloquence that he expended the greatest care.

That he was justified in so doing is shown clearly by the actual name of the art of which I am speaking. For the verb eloqui means the production and communication to the audience of all that the speaker has conceived in his mind, and without this power all the preliminary accomplishments of oratory are as useless as a sword that is kept permanently concealed within its sheath.

Therefore it is on this that teachers of rhetoric concentrate their attention, since it cannot possibly be acquired without the assistance of the rules of artit is this which is the chief object of our study, the goal of all our exercises and all our efforts at imitation, and it is to this that we devote the energies of a lifetime; it is this that makes one orator surpass his rivals, this that makes one style of speaking preferable to another.

The failure of the orators of the Asiatic and other decadent schools did not lie in their inability to grasp or arrange the facts on which they had to speak, nor, on the other hand, were those who professed what we call the dry style of oratory either fools or incapable of understanding the cases in which they were engaged. No, the fault of the former was that they lacked taste and restraint in speaking, while the latter lacked power, whence it is clear that it is here that the real faults and virtues of oratory are to be found.

This does not, however, mean that we should devote ourselves to the study of words alone. For I am compelled to offer the most prompt and determined resistance to those who would at the very portals of this enquiry lay hold of the admissions I have just made and, disregarding the subject matter which, after all, is the backbone of any speech, devote themselves to the futile and crippling study of words in a vain desire to acquire the gift of elegance, a gift which I myself regard as the fairest of all the glories of oratory, but only when it is natural and unaffected.

Healthy bodies, enjoying a good circulation and strengthened by exercise, acquire grace from the same source that gives them strength, for they have a healthy complexion, firm flesh and shapely thews. But, on the other hand, the man who attempts to enhance these physical graces by the effeminate use of depilatories and cosmetics, succeeds merely in defacing them by the very care which he bestows on them.

Again, a tasteful and magnificent dress, as the Greek poet tells us, lends added dignity to its wearer: but effeminate and luxurious apparel fails to adorn the body and merely reveals the foulness of the mind. Similarly, a translucent and iridescent style merely serves to emasculate the subject which it arrays with such pomp of words. Therefore I would have the orator, while careful in his choice of words, be even more concerned about his subject matter.

For, as a rule, the best words are essentially suggested by the subject matter and are discovered by their own intrinsic light. But to-day we hunt for these words as though they were always hiding themselves and striving to elude our grasp. And thus we fail to realise that they are to be found in the subject of our speech, and seek them elsewhere, and, when we have found them, force them to suit their context.

It is with a more virile spirit that we should pursue eloquence, who, if only her whole body be sound, will never think it her duty to polish her nails and tire her hair. The usual result of over-attention to the niceties of style is the deterioration of our eloquence.

The main reason for this is that those words are best which are least far-fetched and give the impression of simplicity and reality. For those words which are obviously the result of careful search and even seem to parade their self-conscious art, fail to attain the grace at which they aim and lose all appearance of sincerity because they darken the sense and choke the good seed by their own luxuriant overgrowth.

For in our passion for words we paraphrase what might be said in plain language, repeat what we have already said at sufficient length, pile up a number of words where one would suffice, and regard allusion as better than directness of speech. So, too, all directness of speech is at a discount, and we think no phrase eloquent that another could conceivably have used.

We borrow figures and metaphors from the most decadent poets, and regard it as a real sign of genius that it should require a genius to understand our meaning. And yet Cicero long since laid down this rule in the clearest of language, that the worst fault in speaking is to adopt a style inconsistent with the idiom of ordinary speech and contrary to the common feeling of mankind.

But nowadays our rhetoricians regard Cicero as lacking both polish and learning; we are far superior, for we look upon everything that is dictated by nature as beneath our notice, and seek not for the true ornaments of speech, but for meretricious finery, as though there were any real virtue in words save in their power to represent facts. And if we have to spend all our life in the laborious effort to discover words which will at once be brilliant, appropriate and lucid, and to arrange them with exact precision, we lose all the fruit of our studies.

And yet we see the majority of modern speakers wasting their time over the discovery of single words and over the elaborate weighing and measurement of such words when once discovered. Even if the special aim of such a practice were always to secure the best words, such an ill-starred form of industry would be much to be deprecated, since it checks tile natural current of our speech and extinguishes the warmth of imagination by the delay and loss of self-confidence which it occasions.

For the orator who cannot endure to lose a single word is like a man plunged in griping poverty. On the other hand, if he will only first form a true conception of the principles of eloquence, accumulate a copious supply of words by wide and suitable reading, apply the art of arrangement to the words thus acquired, and finally, by continual exercise, develop strength to use his acquisitions so that every word is ready at hand and lies under his very eyes, he will never lose a single word.

For the man who follows these instructions will find that facts and words appropriate to their expression will present themselves spontaneously. But it must be remembered that a long course of preliminary study is necessary and that the requisite ability must not merely be acquired, but carefully stored for use; for the anxiety devoted to the search for words, to the exercise of the critical faculty and the power of comparison is in its place while we are learning, but not when we are speaking. Otherwise, the orator who has not given sufficient attention to preliminary study will be like a man who, having no fortune, lives from hand to mouth.

If, on the other hand, the powers of speech have been carefully cultivated beforehand, words will yield us ready service, not merely turning up when we search for them, but dwelling in our thoughts and following them as the shadow follows the body.

There are, however, limits even to this form of study; for when our words are good Latin, full of meaning, elegant and aptly arranged, why should we labour further? And yet there are some who are never weary of morbid self-criticism, who throw themselves into an agony of mind almost over separate syllables, and even when they have discovered the best words for their purpose look for some word that is older, less familiar, and less obvious, since they cannot bring themselves to realise that when a speech is praised for its words, it implies that its sense is inadequate.

While, then, style calls for the utmost attention, we must always bear in mind that nothing should be done for the sake of words only, since words were invented merely to give expression to things: and those words are the most satisfactory which give the best expression to the thoughts of our mind and produce the effect which we desire upon the minds of the judges.

Such words will assuredly be productive of a style that will both give pleasure and awaken admiration; and the admiration will be of a kind far other than that which we bestow on portents, while the pleasure evoked by the charm will have nothing morbid about it, but will be praiseworthy and dignified.

I. What the Greeks call φράσιν we in Latin call elocuio or style. Style is revealed both in individual words and in groups of words. As regards the former, we must see that they are Latin, clear, elegant and well-adapted to produce the desired effect. As regards the latter, they must be correct, aptly placed and adorned with suitable figures.

I have already, in the portions of the first book dealing with the subject of grammar, said all that is necessary on the way to acquire idiomatic and correct speech. But there my remarks were restricted to the prevention of positive faults, and it is well that I should now point out that our words should have nothing provincial or foreign about them. For you will find that there are a number of writers by no means deficient in style whose language is precious rather than idiomatic. As an illustration of my meaning I would remind you of the story of the old woman at Athens, who, when Theophrastus, a man of no mean eloquence, used one solitary word in an affected way, immediately said that he was a foreigner, and on being asked how she detected it, replied that his language was too Attic for Athens. Again Asinius Pollio held that Livy, for all his astounding eloquence, showed traces of the idiom of Padua. Therefore, if possible, our voice and all our words should be such as to reveal the native of this city, so that our speech may seem to be of genuine Roman origin, and not merely to have been presented with Roman citizenship.

Clearness results above all from propriety in the use of words. But propriety is capable of more than one interpretation. In its primary sense it means calling things by their right names, and is consequently sometimes to be avoided, for our language must not be obscene, unseemly or mean.

Language may be described as mean when it is beneath the dignity of the subject or the rank of the speaker. Some orators fall into serious error in their eagerness to avoid this fault, and are afraid of all words that are in ordinary use, even although they may be absolutely necessary for their purpose. There was, for example, the man who in the course of a speech spoke of Iberian grass, a meaningless phrase intelligible only to himself. Cassius Severus, however, by way of deriding his affectation, explained that he meant Spanish broom.

Nor do I see why a certain distinguished orator thought fishes conserved in brine a more elegant phrase than the word which he avoided. But while there is no special merit in the form of propriety which consists in calling things by their real names, it is a fault to fly to the opposite extreme. This fault we call impropriety, while the Greeks call it ἄκυρον As examples I may cite the Virgilian, Never could I have hoped for such great woe, or the phrase, which I noted had been corrected by Cicero in a speech of Dolabella's, To bring death, or again, phrases of a kind that win praise from some of our contemporaries, such as, His words fell from the cross. On the other hand, everything that lacks appropriateness will not necessarily suffer from the fault of positive impropriety, because there are, in the first place, many things which have no proper term either in Greek or Latin.

For example, the verb iaculari is specially used in the sense of to throw a javelin, whereas there is no special verb appropriated to the throwing of a ball or a stake. So, too, while lapidare has the obvious meaning of to stone, there is no special word to describe the throwing of clods or potsherds.

Hence abuse or catachresis of words becomes necessary, while metaphor, also, which is the supreme ornament of oratory, applies words to things with which they have strictly no connexion. Consequently propriety turns not on the actual term, but on the meaning of the term, and must be tested by the touchstone of the understanding, not of the ear.

The second sense in which the word propriety is used occurs when there are a number of things all called by the same name: in this case the original term from which the others are derived is styled the proper term. For example, the word vertex means a whirl of water, or of anything else that is whirled in a like manner: then, owing to the fashion of coiling the hair, it comes to mean the top of the head, while finally, from this sense it derives the meaning of the highest point of a mountain. All these things may correctly be called vertices, but the proper use of the term is the first. So, too, solea and tuidus are employed as names of fish, to mention no other cases. The third kind of propriety is found in the case where a thing which serves a number of purposes has a special name in some one particular context; for example, the proper term for a funeral song is naenia, and for the general's tent augurale. Again, a term which is common to a number of things may be applied in a proper or special sense to some one of them. Thus we use urbs in the special sense of Rome, venales in the special sense of newly-purchased slaves, and Corinthia in the special sense of bronzes, although there are other cities besides Rome, and many other things which may be styled venales besides slaves, and gold and silver are found at Corinth as well as bronze. But the use of such terms implies no special excellence in an orator.

There is, however, a form of propriety of speech which deserves the highest praise, that is to say, the employment of words with the maximum of significance, as, for instance, when Cato said that Caesar was thoroughly sober when he undertook the task of overthrowing the constitution, or as Virgil spoke of a thin-drawn strain, and Horace of the shrill pipe, and dread Hannibal.

Some also include under this head that form of propriety which is derived from characteristic epithets, such as in the Virgilian phrases, sweet unfermented wine, or with white teeth. But of this sort of propriety I shall have to speak elsewhere.

Propriety is also made to include the appropriate use of words in metaphor, while at times the salient characteristic of an individual comes to be attached to him as a proper name: thus Fabius was called Cunctator, the Delayer, on account of the most remarkable of his many military virtues. Some, perhaps, may think that words which mean more than they actually say deserve mention in connexion with clearness, since they assist the understanding. I, however, prefer to place emphasis among the ornaments of oratory, since it does not make a thing intelligible, but merely more intelligible.

Obscurity, on the other hand, results from the employment of obsolete words, as, for instance, if an author should search the records of the priests, the earliest treaties and the works of long-forgotten writers with the deliberate design of collecting words that no man living understands. For there are persons who seek to gain a reputation for erudition by such means as this, in order that they may be regarded as the sole depositories of certain forms of knowledge.

Obscurity may also be produced by the use of words which are more familiar in certain districts than in others, or which are of a technical character, such as the wind called Atabalus, or a sack-ship, or in malo cosanum. Such expressions should be avoided if we are pleading before a judge who is ignorant of their meaning, or, if used, should be explained, as may have to be done in the case of what are called homonyms. For example, the word taurus may be unintelligible unless we make it clear whether we are speaking of a bull, or a mountain, or a constellation, or the name of a man, or the root of a tree.

A greater source of obscurity is, however, to be found in the construction and combination of words, and the ways in which this may occur are still more numerous. Therefore, a sentence should never be so long that it is impossible to follow its drift, nor should its conclusion be unduly postponed by transposition or an excessive use of hyperbaton. Still worse is the result when the order of the words is confused as in the line

In the midmost sea

Rocks are there by Italians altars called.

Again, parenthesis, so often employed by orators and historians, and consisting in the insertion of one sentence in the midst of another, may seriously hinder the understanding of a passage, unless the insertion is short. For example, in the passage where Vergil describes a colt, the words

Nor fears he empty noises, are followed by a number of remarks of a totally different form, and it is only four lines later that the poet returns to the point and says,

Then, if tile sound of arms be heard afar,

How to stand still he knows not.

Above all, ambiguity must be avoided, and by ambiguity I mean not merely the kind of which I have already spoken, where the sense is uncertain, as in the clause Chremetem audivi percussisse Demean, but also that form of ambiguity which, although it does not actually result in obscuring the sense, falls into the same verbal error as if a man should say visum a se hominem librum scribentem (that he had seen a man writing a book). For although it is clear that the book was being written by the man, the sentence is badly put together, and its author has made it as ambiguous as he could.

Again, some writers introduce a whole host of useless words; for, in their eagerness to avoid ordinary methods of expression, and allured by false ideals of beauty they wrap up everything in a multitude of words simply and solely because they are unwilling to make a direct and simple statement of the facts: and then they link up and involve one of those long-winded clauses with others like it, and extend their periods to a length beyond the compass of mortal breath.

Some even expend an infinity of toil to acquire this vice, which, by the way, is nothing new: for I learn from the pages of Livy that there was one, a teacher, who instructed his pupils to make all they said obscure, using the Greek word σκότισον (darken it.) It was this same habit that gave rise to the famous words of praise, So much the better: even I could not understand you.

Others are consumed with a passion for brevity and omit words which are actually necessary to the sense, regarding it as a matter of complete indifference whether their meaning is intelligible to others, so long as they know what they mean themselves. For my own part, I regard as useless words which make such a demand upon the ingenuity of the hearer. Others, again, succeed in committing the same fault by a perverse misuse of figures.

Worst of all are the phrases which the Greeks call ἀδιανόητα, that is to say, expressions which, though their meaning is obvious enough on the surface, have a secret meaning, as for example in the phrase cum ductus est caecus secundam viam stare, or where the man, who is supposed in the scholastic theme to have torn his own limbs with his teeth, is said to have lain upon himself

Such expressions are regarded as ingenious, daring and eloquent, simply because of their ambiguity, and quite a number of persons have become infected by the belief that a passage which requires a commentator must for that very reason be a masterpiece of elegance. Nay, there is even a class of hearer who find a special pleasure in such passages; for the fact that they can provide an answer to the riddle fills them with an ecstasy of self-congratulation, as if they had not merely heard the phrase, but invented it.

For my own part, I regard clearness as the first essential of a good style: there must be propriety in our words, their order must be straightforward, the conclusion of the period must not be long postponed, there must be nothing lacking and nothing superfluous. Thus our language will be approved by the learned and clear to the uneducated. I am speaking solely of clearness in style, as I have already dealt with clearness in the presentation of facts in the rules I laid down for the statement of the case.

But the general method is the same in both. For if what we say is not less nor more than is required, and is clear and systematically arranged, the whole matter will be plain and obvious even to a not too attentive audience. For we must never forget that the attention of the judge is not always so keen that he will dispel obscurities without assistance, and bring the light of his intelligence to bear on the dark places of our speech. On the contrary, lie will have many other thoughts to distract him unless what we say is so clear that our words will thrust themselves into his mind even when he is not giving us his attention, just as the sunlight forces itself upon the eyes.

Therefore our aim must be not to put him in a position to understand our argument, but to force him to understand it. Consequently we shall frequently repeat anything which we think the judge has failed to take in as he should. We shall say, for example, I fear that this portion of our case has been somewhat obscurely stated: the fault is mine, and I will therefore re-state it in plainer and simpler language; for the pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.

I now come to the subject of ornament, in which, more than in any other department, the orator undoubtedly allows himself the greatest indulgence. For a speaker wins but trifling praise if he does no more than speak with correctness and lucidity; in fact his speech seems rather to be free from blemish than to have any positive merit.

Even the untrained often possess the gift of invention, and no great learning need be assumed for the satisfactory arrangement of our matter, while if any more recondite art is required, it is generally concealed, since unconcealed it would cease to be an art, while all these qualities are employed solely to serve the interests of the actual case. On the other hand, by the employment of skilful ornament the orator commends himself at the same time, and whereas his other accomplishments appeal to the considered judgment of the learned, this gift appeals to the enthusiastic approval of the world at large, and the speaker who possesses it fights not merely with effective, but with flashing weapons.

If in his defence of Cornelius Cicero had confined himself merely to instructing the judge and speaking in clear and idiomatic Latin without a thought beyond the interests of his case, would he ever have compelled the Roman people to proclaim their admiration not merely by acclamation, but by thunders of applause? No, it was the sublimity and splendour, the brilliance and the weight of his eloquence that evoked such clamorous enthusiasm.

Nor, again, would his words have been greeted with such extraordinary approbation if his speech had been like the ordinary speeches of every day. In my opinion the audience did not know what they were doing, their applause sprang neither from their judgment nor their will; they were seized with a kind of frenzy and, unconscious of the place in which they stood, burst forth spontaneously into a perfect ecstasy of delight.

But rhetorical ornament contributes not a little to the furtherance of our case as well. For when our audience find it a pleasure to listen, their attention and their readiness to believe what they hear are both alike increased, while they are generally filled with delight, and sometimes even transported by admiration. The flash of the sword in itself strikes something of terror to the eye, and we should be less alarmed by the thunderbolt if we feared its violence alone, and not its flash as well.

Cicero was right when, in one of his letters to Brutus, he wrote, Eloquence which evokes no admiration is, in my opinion, unworthy of the name. Aristotle likewise thinks that the excitement of admiration should be one of our first aims. But such ornament must, as I have already said, be bold, manly and chaste, free from all effeminate smoothness and the false hues derived from artificial dyes, and must glow with health and vigour.

So true is this, that although, where ornament is concerned, vice and virtue are never far apart, those who employ a vicious style of embellishment disguise their vices with the name of virtue. Therefore let none of our decadents accuse me of being an enemy to those who speak with grace and finish. I do not deny the existence of such a virtue, I merely deny that they possess it.

Shall I regard a farm as a model of good cultivation because its owner shows me lilies and violets and anemones and fountains of living water in place of rich crops and vines bowed beneath their clusters? Shall I prefer the barren plane and myrtles trimly clipped, to the fruitful olive and the elm that weds the vine? No, let such luxuries delight the rich: but where would their wealth be if they had nought save these?

Again, is beauty an object of no consideration in the planting of fruit trees? Certainly not! For my trees must be planted in due order and at fixed intervals. What fairer sight is there than rows of trees planted in échelon which present straight lines to the eye from whatever angle they be viewed? But it has an additional advantage, since this form of plantation enables every tree to derive an equal share of moisture from the soil.

When the tops of my olive trees rise too high, I lop them away, with the result that their growth expands laterally in a manner that is at once more pleasing to the eye and enables them to bear more fruit owing to the increase in the number of branches. A horse whose flanks are compact is not only better to look upon, but swifter in speed. The athlete whose muscles have been formed by exercise is a joy to the eye, but he is also better fitted for the contests in which he must engage.

In fact true beauty and usefulness always go hand in hand. It does not, however, require any special ability to discern the truth of this. It is more important to note that such seemly ornament must be varied to suit the nature of the material to which it is applied. To begin with the primary classification of oratory, the same form of ornament will not suit demonstrative, deliberative and forensic speeches. For the oratory of display aims solely at delighting the audience, and therefore develops all the resources of eloquence and deploys all its ornament, since it seeks not to steal its way into the mind nor to wrest the victory from its opponent, but aims solely at honour and glory.

Consequently the orator, like the hawker who displays his wares, will set forth before his audience for their inspection, nay, almost for their handling, all his most attractive reflexions, all the brilliance that language and the charm that figures can supply, together with all the magnificence of metaphor and the elaborate art of composition that is at his disposal. For his success concerns himself, and not his cause.

But when it is a question of facts, and he is confronted by the hard realities of battle, his last thought will be for his personal glory. Nay, it is even unseemly to trouble overmuch about words when the greatest interests are at stake. I would not assert that such themes afford no scope for ornament, but such ornament as is employed must be of a more severe, restrained and less obvious character; above all, it must be adapted to the matter in hand.

For whereas in deliberative oratory the senate demand a certain loftiness and the people a certain impetuosity of eloquence, the public cases of the courts and those involving capital punishment demand a more exact style. On the other hand, in private deliberations and lawsuits about trifling sums of money (and there are not a few of these) it is more appropriate to employ simple and apparently unstudied language. For we should be ashamed to demand the repayment of a loan in rolling periods, or to display poignant emotion in a case concerned with water-droppings, or to work ourselves into a perspiration over the return of a slave to the vendor. But I am wandering from the point.

Since rhetorical ornament, like clearness, may reside either in individual words or groups of words, we must consider the requirements of both cases. For although tile canon, that clearness mainly requires propriety of language and ornament the skilful use of metaphor, is perfectly sound, it is desirable that we should realise that without propriety ornament is impossible.

But as several words may often have the same meaning (they are called synonyms), some will be more distinguished, sublime, brilliant, attractive or euphonious than others. For as those syllables are the most pleasing to the ear which are composed of the more euphonious letters, thus words composed of such syllables will sound better than others, and the more vowel sounds they contain the more attractive they will be to hear. The same principle governs the linking of word with word; some arrangements will sound better than others.

But words require to be used in different ways. For example, horrible things are best described by words that are actually harsh to the ear. But as a general rule it may be laid down that the best words, considered individually, are those which are fullest or most agreeable in sound. Again, elegant words are always to be preferred to those which are coarse, and there is no room for low words in the speech of a cultivated man.

The choice of striking or sublime words will be determined by the matter in hand; for a word that in one context is magnificent may be turgid in another, and words which are all too mean to describe great things may be suitable enough when applied to subjects of less importance. And just as a mean word embedded in a brilliant passage attracts special attention, like a spot on a bright surface, so if our style be of a plain character, sublime and brilliant words will seem incongruous and tasteless excrescences on a flat surface.

In some cases instinct, and not reason, must supply the touchstone, as, for example, in the line:

A sow was slain to ratify their pacts.

Here the poet, by inventing the word porca, succeeded in producing an elegant impression, whereas if lie had used the masculine porcuis, the very reverse would have been the case. In some cases, however, the incongruity is obvious enough. It was only the other day that we laughed with good reason at the poet who wrote:

The youngling mice had gnawed

Within its chest the purple-bordered gown.

On the other hand, we admire Virgil when he says:

Oft hath the tiny mouse, etc.

For here the epithet is appropriate and prevents our expecting too much, while the use of the singular instead of the plural, and the unusual monosyllabic conclusion of the line, both add to the pleasing effect. Horace accordingly imitated Virgil in both these points, when he wrote,

The fruit shall be a paltry mouse.

Again, our style need not always dwell on the heights: at times it is desirable that it should sink. For there are occasions when the very meanness of the words employed adds force to what we say. When Cicero, in his denunciation of Piso, says, When your whole family rolls up in a dray, do you think that his use of the word dray was accidental, and was not designedly used to increase his audience's contempt for the man he wished to bring to ruin? The same is true when he says elsewhere, You put down your head and butt him.

This device may also serve to carry off a jest, as in the passage of Cicero where he talks of the little sprat of a boy who slept with his elder sister, or where he speaks of Flavius, who put out the eyes of crows, or, again, in the pro Milone, cries, Hi, there! Rufio! and talks of Erucius Antoniaster. On the other hand, this practice becomes more obtrusive when employed in the schools, like the phrase that was so much praised in my boyhood, Give your father bread, or in the same declamation, You feed even your dog. But such tricks do not always come off, especially in the schools, and often turn the laugh against the speaker, particularly in the present day, when declamation has become so far removed from reality and labours under such an extravagant fastidiousness in the choice of words that it has excluded a good half of the language from its vocabulary.

Words are proper, newly-coined or metaphorical. In the case of proper words there is a special dignity conferred by antiquity, since old words, which not everyone would think of using, give our style a venerable and majestic air: this is a form of ornament of which Virgil, with his perfect taste, has made unique use.

For his employment of words such as olli, quianam, moerus, pone and pellacia gives his work that impressive air of antiquity which is so attractive in pictures, but which no art of man can counterfeit. But we must not overdo it, and such words must not be dragged out from the deepest darkness of the past. Quaeso is old enough: what need for us to say quaiso?

Oppido was still used by my older contemporaries, but I fear that no one would tolerate it now. At any rate, antegerio, which means the same, would certainly never be used by anyone who was not possessed with a passion for notoriety.

What need have we of acrumnosum? It is surely enough to call a thing horridum. Reor may be tolerated, autumo smacks of tragedy, proles has become a rarity, while prosapia stamps the man who uses it as lacking taste. Need I say more Almost the whole language has changed.

But there are still some old words that are endeared to us by their antique sheen, while there are others that we cannot avoid using occasionally, such, for example, as nuncupare and fari: there are yet others which it requires some daring to use, but which may still be employed so long as we avoid all appearance of that affectation which Virgil has derided so cleverly:

Britain's Thucydides, whose mad Attic brain

Loved word-amalgams like Corinthian bronze,

First made a horrid blend of words from Gaul,

Tau, al, min, sil and God knows how much else,

Then mixed them in a potion for his brother!

This was a certain Cimber who killed his brother, a fact which Cicero recorded in the words, Cimber has killed his brother German. The epigram against Sallust is scarcely less well known:

Crispus, you, too, Jugurtha's fall who told,

And filched such store of words from Cato old.

It is a tiresome kind of affectation; any one can practise it, and it is made all the worse by the fact that the man who catches the infection will not choose his words to suit his facts, but will drag in irrelevant facts to provide an opportunity for the use of such words. The coining of new words is, as I stated in the first book, more permissible in Greek, for the Greeks did not hesitate to coin nouns to represent certain sounds and emotions, and in truth they were taking no greater liberty than was taken by the first men when they gave names to things.

Our own writers have ventured on a few attempts at composition and derivation, but have not met with much success. I remember in my young days there was a dispute between Pomponius and Seneca which even found its way into the prefaces of their works, as to whether gradus eliminate was a phrase which ought to have been allowed in tragedy. But the ancients had no hesitation about using even expectorate and, after all, it presents exactly the same formation as exanimat.

Of the coining of words by expansion and inflexion we have examples, such as the Ciceronian beatitas and beatitudo, forms which he feels to be somewhat harsh, though he thinks they may be softened by use. Derivatives may even be fashioned from proper names, quite apart from ordinary words, witness Sullaturit in Cicero and Fimbriatus and Figulatus in Asinius.

Many new words have been coined in imitation of the Greeks, more especially by Verginius Flavus, some of which, such as queens and essentia, are regarded as unduly harsh. But I see no reason why we should treat them with such contempt, except, perhaps, that we are highly self-critical and suffer in consequence from the poverty of our language. Some new formations do, however, succeed in establishing themselves.

For words which now are old, once were new, and there are some words in use which are of quite recent origin, such as reatus, invented by Messala, and munerarius, invented by Augustus. So, too, my own teachers still persisted in banning the use of words, such as piratica, musica and fabrica, while Cicero regards favor and urbanus as but newly introduced into the language. For in a letter to Brutus he says, eum amorer et eum, ut hoc verbo utar, favored in consilium advocabo, while to Appius Pulcher he writes, le hominem non solum sapientem, verum etiam, ut nunc loquimur, urbanum. He also thinks that Terence was the first to use the word obsequium, while Caecilius asserts that Sisenna was the first to use the phrase albente caelo. Hortensius seems to have been the first to use cervix in the singular, since the ancients confined themselves to the plural. We must not then be cowards, for I cannot agree with Celsus when he forbids orators to coin new words.

For some words, as Cicero says, are native, that is to say, are used in their original meaning, while others are derivative, that is to say, formed from the native. Granted then that we are not justified in coining entirely new words having no resemblance to the words invented by primitive man, I must still ask at what date we were first forbidden to form derivatives and to modify and compound words, processes which were undoubtedly permitted to later generations of mankind. If, however, one of our inventions seems a little risky, we must take certain measures in advance to save it from censure, prefacing it by phrases such as so to speak, if I may say so, in a certain sense, or if you will allow me to make use of such a word. The same practice may be followed in the case of bold metaphors, and it is not too much to say that almost anything can be said with safety provided we show by the very fact of our anxiety that the word or phrase in question is not due to an error of judgment. The Greeks have a neat saying on this subject, advising us to be the first to blame our own hyperbole.

The metaphorical use of words cannot be recommended except in connected discourse. Enough has now been said on the subject of single words, which, as I have pointed out elsewhere, have no intrinsic value of their own. On the other hand, there is no word which is intrinsically ugly unless it be beneath the dignity of the subject on which we have to speak, excepting always such words as are nakedly obscene.

I would commend this remark to those who do not think it necessary to avoid obscenity on the ground that no word is indecent in itself and that, if a thing is revolting, its unpleasantness will be realised clearly enough by whatever name it is called. Accordingly, I shall content myself with following the good old rules of Roman modesty and, as I have already replied to such persons, shall vindicate the cause of decency by saying no more on this unpleasant subject.

Let us now pass to consider connected discourse. Its adornment may be effected, primarily, in two ways; that is to say, we must consider first our ideal of style, and secondly how we shall express this ideal in actual words. The first essential is to realise clearly what we wish to enhance or attenuate, to express with vigour or calm, in luxuriant or austere language, at length or with conciseness, with gentleness or asperity, magnificence or subtlety, gravity or wit.

The next essential is to decide by what kind of metaphor, figures, reflexions, methods and arrangement we may best produce the effect which we desire. But, before I discuss ornament, I must first touch upon its opposite, since the first of all virtues is the avoidance of faults.

Therefore we must not expect any speech to be ornate that is not, in the first place, acceptable. An acceptable style is defined by Cicero as one which is not over-elegant: not that our style does not require elegance and polish, which are essential parts of ornament, but that excess is always a vice.

He desires, therefore, that our words should have a certain weight about them, and that our thoughts should be of a serious cast or, at any rate, adapted to the opinions and character of mankind. These points once secured, we may proceed to employ those expressions which he regards as conferring distinction on style, that is to say, specially selected words and phrases, metaphor, hyperbole, appropriate epithets, repetitions, synonyms and all such language as may suit our case and provide an adequate representation of the facts.

But since my first task is to point out the faults to be avoided, I will begin by calling attention to the fault known as κακέμφατον, a term applied to the employment of language to which perverted usage has given an obscene meaning: take, for example, phrases such as ductare exercitus and patrare bellum, which were employed by Sallust in their old and irreproachable sense, but, I regret to say, cause amusement in certain quarters to-day. This, however, is not, in my opinion, the fault of the writer, but of his readers;

still it is one to be avoided, for we have perverted the purity of language by our own corruption, and there is no course left to us but to give ground before the victorious advance of vice. The same term is also applied in the cases where an unfortunate collocation of words produces an obscene suggestion. For example, in the phrase cum hominibus notis loqui, unless hominibus is placed between cum and notis, we shall commit ourselves to a phrase which will require some apology, since the final letter of the first syllable, which cannot be pronounced without closing the lips, will force us either to pause in a most unbecoming manner, or by assimilation to the n which follows will produce a most objectionable suggestion.

I might quote other collocations of words which are liable to the same objection, but to discuss them in detail would be to fall into that very fault which I have just said should be avoided. A similar offence against modesty may be caused by the division of words, as, for example, by the use of the nominative of intercapedinis.

And it is not merely in writing that this may occur, but you will find, unless you exercise the greatest care, that there are a number of persons who take pleasure in putting an indecent interpretation on words, thinking, as Ovid says:

that whatsoe'er is hid is best of all.

Nay, an obscene meaning may be extracted even from words which are as far removed from indecency as possible. Celsus, for example, detects an instance of κακέμφατον in the Virgilian phrase: incipiunt agitata tumescere;

but if this point of view be accepted, it will be risky to say anything at all.

Next to indecency of expression comes meanness, styled ταπείνωσις, when the grandeur or dignity of anything is diminished by the words used, as in the line:

There is a rocky wart upon the mountain's brow.

The opposite fault, which is no less serious, consists in calling small things by extravagant names, though such a practice is permissible when deliberately designed to raise a laugh. Consequently we must not call a parricide a scamp, nor a man who keeps a harlot a villain, since the first epithet is too weak and the second too strong.

This fault will result in making our language dull, or coarse, jejune, heavy, unpleasing or slovenly, all of which faults are best realised by reference to the virtues which are their opposites, that is, point, polish, richness, liveliness, charm, and finish.

We must also avoid μείωσις a term applied to meagreness and inadequacy of expression, although it is a fault which characterises an obscure style rather than one which lacks ornament. But meiosis may be deliberately employed, and is then called a figure, as also is tautology, which means the repetition of a word or phrase.

The latter, though not avoided with special care even by the best authors, may sometimes be regarded as a fault: it is, in fact, a blemish into which Cicero not infrequently falls through indifference to such minor details: take, for example, the following passage, Judges, this judgment was not merely unlike a judgment. It is sometimes given another name, ἐπανάληψις, under which appellation it is ranked among figures, of which I shall give examples when I come to the discussion of stylistic virtues.

A worse fault is ὁμοείδεια, or sameness, a term applied to a style which has no variety to relieve its tedium, and which presents a uniform monotony of hue. This is one of the surest signs of lack of art, and produces a uniquely unpleasing effect, not merely on the mind, but on the ear, on account of its sameness of thought, the uniformity of its figures, and the monotony of its structure.

We must also avoid macrology, that is, the employment of more words than are necessary, as, for instance, in the sentence of Livy, The ambassadors, having failed to obtain peace, went back home, whence they had come. On the other hand, periphrasis, which is akin to this blemish, is regarded as a virtue. Another fault is pleonasm, when we overload our style with a superfluity of words, as in the phrase, I saw it with my eyes, where I saw it would have been sufficient.

Cicero passed a witty comment on a fault of this kind in a declamation of Hirtius when he said that a child had been carried for ten months in his mother's womb. Oh, he said, I suppose other women carry them in their bags. Sometimes, however, the form of pleonasm, of which I have just given an example, may have a pleasing effect when employed for the sake of emphasis, as in the Virgilian phrase:

With mine own ears his voice I heard.

But whenever the addition is not deliberate, but merely tame and redundant, it must be regarded as a fault. There is also a fault entitled περιεργία, which I may perhaps translate by superfluous elaboration, which differs from its corresponding virtue much as fussiness differs from industry, and superstition from religion. Finally, every word which neither helps the sense nor the style may be regarded as faulty.

Cacozelia, or perverse affectation, is a fault in every kind of style: for it includes all that is turgid, trivial, luscious, redundant, far-fetched or extravagant, while the same name is also applied to virtues carried to excess, when the mind loses its critical sense and is misled by the false appearance of beauty, the worst of all offences against style, since other faults are due to carelessness, but this is deliberate.

This form of affectation, however, affects style alone. For the employment of arguments which might equally well be advanced by the other side, or are foolish, inconsistent or superfluous, are all faults of matter, whereas corruption of style is revealed in the employment of improper or redundant words, in obscurity of meaning, effeminacy of rhythm, or in the childish search for similar or ambiguous expressions.

Further, it always involves insincerity, even though all insincerity does not imply affectation. For it consists in saying something in an unnatural or unbecoming or superfluous manner. Style may, however, be corrupted in precisely the same number of ways that it may be adorned. But I have discussed this subject at greater length in another work, and have frequently called attention to it in this, while I shall have occasion to mention it continually in the remaining books. For in dealing with ornament, I shall occasionally speak of faults which have to be avoided, but which are hard to distinguish from virtues.

To these blemishes may be added faulty arrangement or ἀνοικονόμητον, the faulty use of figures or ἀσχημάτιστον, and the faulty collocation of words or κακοσύνθετον. But, as I have already discussed arrangement, I will confine myself to the consideration of figures and structure. There is also a fault known as Σαρδισμὸς, which consists in the indiscriminate use of several different dialects, as, for instance, would result from mixing Doric, Ionic, and even Aeolic words with Attic.

A similar fault is found amongst ourselves, consisting in the indiscriminate mixture of grand words with mean, old with new, and poetic with colloquial, the result being a monstrous medley like that described by Horace in the opening portion of his Ars poetica,

If a painter choose

To place a man's head on a horse's neck, and, be proceeds to say, should add other limbs from different animals.

The ornate is something that goes beyond what is merely lucid and acceptable. It consists firstly in forming a clear conception of what we wish to say, secondly in giving this adequate expression, and thirdly in lending it additional brilliance, a process which may correctly be termed embellishment. Consequently we must place among ornaments that ἐνάργεια which I mentioned in the rules which I laid down for the statement of facts, because vivid illustration, or, as some prefer to call it, representation, is something more than mere clearness, since the latter merely lets itself be seen, whereas the former thrusts itself upon our notice.

It is a great gift to be able to set forth the facts on which we are speaking clearly and vividly. For oratory fails of its full effect, and does not assert itself as it should, if its appeal is merely to the hearing, and if the judge merely feels that the facts on which he has to give his decision are being narrated to him, and not displayed in their living truth to the eyes of the mind.

But since different views have been held with regard to this art of representation, I shall not attempt to divide it into all its different departments, whose number is ostentatiously multiplied by certain writers, but shall content myself with touching on those which appear to me to be absolutely necessary. There is, then, to begin with, one form of vividness which consists in giving an actual word-picture of a scene, as in the passage beginning,

Forthwith each hero tiptoe stood erect.

Other details follow which give us such a picture of the two boxers confronting each other for the fight, that it could not have been clearer had we been actual spectators.

Cicero is supreme in this department, as in others. Is there anybody so incapable of forming a mental picture of a scene that, when he reads the following passage from the Verrines, he does not seem not merely to see the actors in the scene, the place itself and their very dress, but even to imagine to himself other details that the orator does not describe? There on the shore stood the praetor, the representative of the Roman people, with slippered feet, robed in a purple cloak, a tunic streaming to his heels, and leaning on the arm of this worthless woman.

For my own part, I seem to see before my eyes his face, his eyes, the unseemly blandishments of himself and his paramour, the silent loathing and frightened shame of those who viewed the scene.

At times, again, the picture which we endeavour to present is fuller in detail, as, for example, in the following description of a luxurious banquet, which is also from Cicero, since he by himself is capable of supplying admirable examples of every kind of oratorical ornament: I seemed to see some entering, some leaving the room, some reeling under the influence of the wine, others yawning with yesterday's potations. The floor was foul with wine-smears, covered with wreaths half-withered and littered with fishbones.

What more would any man have seen who had actually entered the room? So, too, we may move our hearers to tears by the picture of a captured town. For the mere statement that the town was stormed, while no doubt it embraces all that such a calamity involves, has all the curtness of a dispatch, and fails to penetrate to the emotions of the hearer.

But if we expand all that the one word stormed includes, we shall see the flames pouring from house and temple, and hear the crash of falling roofs and one confused clamour blent of many cries: we shall behold some in doubt whither to fly, others clinging to their nearest and dearest in one last embrace, while the wailing of women and children and the laments of old men that the cruelty of fate should have spared them to see that day will strike upon our ears.

Then will come the pillage of treasure sacred and profane, the hurrying to and fro of the plunderers as they carry off their booty or return to seek for more, the prisoners driven each before his own inhuman captor, the mother struggling to keep her child, and the victors fighting over the richest of the spoil. For though, as I have already said, the sack of a city includes all these things, it is less effective to tell the whole news at once than to recount it detail by detail.

And we shall secure the vividness we seek, if only our descriptions give the impression of truth, nay, we may even add fictitious incidents of the type which commonly occur. The same vivid impression may be produced also by the mention of the accidents of each situation:

Chill shudderings shake my limbs

And all my blood is curdled cold with fear;

or

And trembling mothers clasped

Their children to their breast.

Though the attainment of such effects is, in my opinion, the highest of all oratorical gifts, it is far from difficult of attainment. Fix your eyes on nature and follow her. All eloquence is concerned with the activities of life, while every man applies to himself what he hears from others, and the mind is always readiest to accept what it recognises to be true to nature.

The invention of similes has also provided an admirable means of illuminating our descriptions. Some of these are designed for insertion among our arguments to help our proof, while others are devised to make our pictures yet more vivid; it is with this latter class of simile that I am now specially concerned. The following are good examples:—

Thence like fierce wolves beneath the cloud of night, or

Like the bird that flies

Around the shore and the fish-haunted reef,

Skimming the deep.

In employing this form of ornament we must be especially careful that the subject chosen for our simile is neither obscure nor unfamiliar: for anything that is selected for the purpose of illuminating something else must itself be clearer than that which it is designed to illustrate. Therefore while we may permit poets to employ such similes as:—

As when Apollo wintry Lycia leaves,

And Xanthus' streams, or visits Delos' isle,

His mother's home, it would be quite unsuitable for an orator to illustrate something quite plain by such obscure allusions.

But even the type of simile which I discussed in connexion with arguments is an ornament to oratory, and serves to make it sublime, rich, attractive or striking, as the case may be. For the more remote the simile is from the subject to which it is applied, the greater will be the impression of novelty and the unexpected which it produces.

The following type may be regarded as commonplace and useful only as helping to create an impression of sincerity: As the soil is improved and rendered more fertile by culture, so is the mind by education, or As physicians amputate mortified limbs, so must we lop away foul and dangerous criminals, even though they be bound to us by ties of blood. Far finer is the following from Cicero's defence of Archias: Rock and deserts reply to the voice of man, savage beasts are oft-times tamed by the power of music and stay their onslaught, and the rest.

This type of simile has, however, sadly degenerated in the hands of some of our declaimers owing to the license of the schools. For they adopt false comparisons, and even then do not apply them as they should to the subjects to which they wish them to provide a parallel. Both these faults are exemplified in two similes which were on the lips of everyone when I was a young man, Even the sources of mighty rivers are navigable, and The generous tree bears fruit while it is yet a sapling.

In every comparison the simile either precedes or follows the subject which it illustrates. But sometimes it is free and detached, and sometimes, a far better arrangement, is attached to the subject which it illustrates, the correspondence between the resemblances being exact, an effect produced by reciprocal representation, which the Greeks style ἀνταπόδοσις. For example, the simile already quoted,

Thence like fierce wolves beneath the cloud of night, precedes its subject. On the other hand, an example of the simile following its subject is to be found in the first Georgic, where, after the long lamentation over the wars civil and foreign that have afflicted Rome, there come the lines:

As when, their barriers down, the chariots speed

Lap after lap; in vain the charioteer

Tightens the curb: his steeds ungovernable

Sweep him away nor heeds the car the rein.

There is, however, no antapodosis in these similes.

Such reciprocal representation places both subjects of comparison before our very eyes, displaying them side by side. Virgil provides many remarkable examples, but it will be better for me to quote from oratory. In the pro Murena Cicero says, As among Greek musicians (for so they say), only those turn flute-players that cannot play the lyre, so here at Rome we see that those who cannot acquire the art of oratory betake themselves to the study of the law.

There is also another simile in the same speech, which is almost worthy of a poet, but in virtue of its reciprocal representation is better adapted for ornament: For as tempests are generally preceded by some premonitory signs in the heaven, but often, on the other hand, break forth for some obscure reason without any warning whatsoever, so in the tempests which sway the people at our Roman elections we are not seldom in a position to discern their origin, and yet, on the other hand, it is frequently so obscure that the storm seems to have burst without any apparent cause.

We find also shorter similes, such as Wandering like wild beasts through the woods, or the passage from Cicero's speech against Clodius: He fled from the court like a man escaping naked from a fire. Similar examples from everyday speech will occur to everyone. Such comparisons reveal the gift not merely of placing a thing vividly before the eye, but of doing so with rapidity and without waste of detail.

The praise awarded to perfect brevity is well-deserved; but, on the other hand, brachylogy, which I shall deal with when I come to speak of figures, that is to say, the brevity that says nothing more than what is absolutely necessary, is less effective, although it may be employed with admirable results when it expresses a great deal in a very few words, as in Sallust's description of Mithridates as huge of stature, and armed to match. But unsuccessful attempts to imitate this form of terseness result merely in obscurity.

A virtue which closely resembles the last, but is on a grander scale, is emphasis, which succeeds in revealing a deeper meaning than is actually expressed by the words. There are two kinds of emphasis: the one means more than it says, the other often means something which it does not actually say.

An example of the former is found in Homer, where he makes Menelaus say that the Greeks descended into the Wooden Horse, indicating its size by a single verb. Or again, there is the following example by Virgil:

Descending by a rope let down, a phrase which in a similar manner indicates the height of the horse. The same poet, when he says that the Cyclops lay stretched throughout the cave, by taking the room occupied as the standard of measure, gives an impression of the giant's immense bulk.

The second kind of emphasis consists either in the complete suppression of a word or in the deliberate omission to utter it. As an example of complete suppression I may quote the following passage from the pro Ligario, 4 where Cicero says: But if your exalted position were not matched by your goodness of heart, a quality which is all your own, your very own—I know well enough what I am saying—— Here he suppresses the fact, which is none the less clear enough to us, that he does not lack counsellors who would incite him to cruelty. The omission of a word is produced by aposiopesis, which, however, being a figure, shall be dealt with in its proper place.

Emphasis is also found in the phrases of every day, such as Be a man! or He is but mortal, or We must live! So like, as a rule, is nature to art. It is not, however, sufficient for eloquence to set forth its theme in brilliant and vivid language: there are many different ways of embellishing our style.

For even that absolute and unaffected simplicity which the Greeks call ἀφέλεια has in it a certain chaste ornateness such as we admire also in women, while a minute accuracy in securing propriety and precision in our words likewise produces an impression of neatness and delicacy. Again copiousness may consist either in wealth of thought or luxuriance of language.

Force, too, may be shown in different ways; for there will always be force in anything that is in its own way effective. Its most important exhibitions are to be found in the following: δείνωσις or a certain sublimity in the exaggerated denunciation of unworthy conduct, to mention no other topics; φαντασία or imagination, which assists us to form mental pictures of things; ἐξεργασία or finish, which produces completeness of effect; ἐπεξεργασία an intensified form of the preceding, which reasserts our proofs and clinches the argument by repetition;

and ἐνέργεια, or vigour, a near relative of all these qualities, which derives its name from action and finds its peculiar function in securing that nothing that we say is tame. Bitterness, which is generally employed in abuse, may be of service as in the following passage. from Cassius: What will you do when I invade your special province, that is, when I show that, as far as abuse is concerned, you are a mere ignoramus?

Pungency also may be employed, as in the following remark of Crassus: Shall I regard you as a consul, when you refuse to regard me as a senator? But the real power of oratory lies in enhancing or attenuating the force of words. Each of these departments has the same number of methods; I shall touch on the more important; those omitted will be of a like character, while all are concerned either with words or things. I have, however, already dealt with the methods of invention and arrangement, and shall therefore now concern myself with the way in which style may elevate or depress the subject in hand.

IV. The first method of amplification or attenuation is to be found in the actual word employed to describe a thing. For example, we may say that a man who was beaten was murdered, or that a dishonest fellow is a robber, or, on the other hand, we may say that one who struck another merely touched him, and that one who wounded another merely hurt him. The following passage from the pro Caelio, provides examples of both: If a widow lives freely, if being by nature bold she throws restraint to the winds, makes wealth an excuse for luxury, and strong passions for playing the harlot, would this be a reason for my regarding a man who was somewhat free in his method of saluting her to be an adulterer?

For here he calls an immodest woman a harlot, and says that one who had long been her lover saluted her with a certain freedom. This sort of amplification may be strengthened and made more striking by pointing the comparison between words of stronger meaning and those for which we propose to substitute them, as Cicero does in denouncing Verres: I have brought before you, judges, not a thief, but a plunderer; not an adulterer, but a ravisher; not a mere committer of sacrilege, but the enemy of all religious observance and all holy things; not an assassin, but a bloodthirsty butcher who has slain our fellowcitizens and our allies.

In this passage the first epithets are bad enough, but are rendered still worse by those which follow. I consider, However, that there are four principal methods of implication: augmentation, comparison, reasoning and accumulation. Of these, augmentation is most impressive when it ends grandeur even to comparative insignificance. This may be effected either by one step or by everal, and may be carried not merely to the highest degree, but sometimes even beyond it.

A single example from Cicero will suffice to llustrate all these points. It is a sin to bind a Roman citizen, a crime to scourge him, little short if the most unnatural murder to put him to death; chat then shall I call his crucifixion? If he had merely been scourged, we should have had but one tep, indicated by the description even of the lesser offence as a sin, while if he had merely been killed, we should have had several more steps; but after saying that it was little short of the most unatural murder to put him to death, and mentioning the worst of crimes, he adds, What then shall call his crucifixion? Consequently, since he had ready exhausted his vocabulary of crime, words must necessarily fail him to describe something still orse.

There is a second method of passing beond the highest degree, exemplified in Virgil's description of Lausus:

Than whom there was not one more fair

Saving Laurentian Turnus.

or here the words than whom there was not one more fair give us the superlative, on which the poet proceeds to superimpose a still higher degree.

There is also a third sort, which is not attained by gradation, a height which is not a degree beyond the superlative, but such that nothing greater can be conceived. You beat your mother. What more need I say? You beat your mother. For to make a thing so great as to be incapable of augmentation is in itself a kind of augmentation.

It is also possible to heighten our style less obviously, but perhaps yet more effectively, by introducing a continuous and unbroken series in which each word is stronger than the last, as Cicero does when he describes how Antony vomited before an assembly of the Roman people, while performing a public duty, while Master of the Horse. Each phrase is more forcible than that which went before. Vomiting is an ugly thing in itself, even when there is no assembly to witness it; it is ugly when there is such an assembly, even though it be not an assembly of the people; ugly even though it be an assembly of the people and not the Roman people; ugly even though he were engaged on no business at the time, even if his business were not public business, even if lie were not Master of the Horse.

Another might have broken up the series and lingered over each step in the ascending scale, but Cicero hastens to his climax and reaches the height not by laborious effort, but by the impetus of his speed. Just as this form of amplification rises to a climax, so, too, the form which depends on comparison seeks to rise from the less to the greater, since by raising what is below it must necessarily exalt that which is above, as, for example: in the following passage:

If this had befallen you at the dinner-table in the midst of your amazing potations, who would not have thought it unseemly? But it occurred at an assembly of the Roman people. Or take this passage from the speech against Catiline: In truth, if my slaves feared me as all your fellowcitizens fear you, I should think it wise to leave my house.

At times, again, we may advance a parallel to make something which we desire to exaggerate seem greater than ever, as Cicero does in the pro Cluentio, where, after telling a story of a woman of Miletus who took a bribe from the reversionary heirs to prevent the birth of her expected child, lie cries, How much greater is the punishment deserved by Oppianicus for the same offence! For that woman, by doing violence to her own body did but torture herself, whereas he procured the same result by applying violence and torture to the body of another.

I would not, however, have anyone think that this method is identical with that used in argument, where the greater is inferred from the less, although there is a certain resemblance between the two. For in the latter case we are aiming at proof, in the former at amplification; for example, in the passage just cited about Oppianicus, the object of the comparison is not to show that his action was a crime, but that it was even worse than another crime. There is, however, a certain affinity between the two methods, and I will therefore repeata passage which I quoted there, although my present purpose is different.

For what I have now to demonstrate is that when amplification is our purpose we compare not merely whole with whole, but part with part, as in the following passage: Did that illustrious citizen, the pontifex maximus, Publius Scipio, acting merely in his private capacity, kill Tiberius Gracchus when he introduced but slight changes for the worse that did not seriously impair the constitution of the state, and shall we as consuls suffer Catiline to live, whose aim was to lay waste the whole world with fire and sword?

Here Catiline is compared to Gracchus, the constitution of the state to the whole world, a slight change for the worse to fire and sword and desolation, and a private citizen to the consuls, all comparisons affording ample opportunity for further individual expansion, if anyone should desire so to do.

With regard to the amplificalion produced by reasoning, we must consider whether reasoning quite expresses my meaning. I am not a stickler for exact terminology, provided the sense is clear to any serious student. My motive in using this term was, however, this, that this form of amplification produces its effect at a point other than that where it is actually introduced. One thing is magnified in order to effect a corresponding augmentation elsewhere, and it is by reasoning that our hearers are then led on from the first point to the second which we desire to emplasise.

Cicero, when he is about to reproach Antony with his drunkenness and vomiting, says, You with such a throat, such flanks, such burly strength in every limb of your prize-fighter's body, etc. What have his throat and flanks to do with his drunkenness? The reference is far from pointless: for by looking at them we are enabled to estimate the quantity of the wine which he drank at Hippias' wedding, and was unable to carry or digest in spite of the fact that his bodily strength was worthy of a prizefighter. Accordingly if, in such a case, one thing is inferred from another, the term reasoning is neither improper nor extraordinary, since it has been applied on similar grounds to one of the bases. So, again, amplification results from subsequent events, since the violence with which the wine burst from him was such that the vomiting was not accidental nor voluntary, but a matter of necessity, at a moment when it was specially unseemly, while the food was not recently swallowed, as is sometimes the case, but the residue of the revel of the preceding day.

On the other hand, amplification may equally result from antecedent circumstances; for example, when Juno made her request to Aeolus, the latter

"Turned his spear and smote

The mountain's caverned side, and forth the winds

Rushed in a throng,"

whereby the poet shows what a mighty tempest will ensue.

Again, when we have depicted some horrible circumstance in such colours as to raise the detestation of our audience to its height, we then proceed to make light of them in order that what is to follow may seem still more horrible: consider the following passage from Cicero: These are but trivial offences for so great a criminal. The captain of a warship from a famous city bought off' his threatened scourging for a price: a humane concession! Another paid down a sum of money to save his head from the axe: a perfectly ordinary circumstance! Does not the orator employ a process of reasoning to enable the audience to infer how great the implied crime must be when such actions were but humane and ordinary in comparison? So, again, one thing may be magnified by allusion to another: the valour of Scipio is magnified by extolling the fame of Hannibal as a general, and we are asked to marvel at the courage of the Germans and the Gauls in order to enhance the glory of Gaius Caesar.

There is a similar form of amplification which is effected by reference to something which appears to have been said with quite another purpose in view. The chiefs of Troy think it no discredit that Trojan and Greek should endure so many woes for so many years all for the sake of Helen's beauty. How wondrous, then, must her beauty have been! For it is not Paris, her ravisher, that says this; it is not some youth or one of the common herd; no, it is the elders, the wisest of their folk, the counsellors of Priam.

Nay, even the king himself, worn out by a ten years' war, which had cost him the loss of so many of his sons, and threatened to lay his kingdom in the dust, the man who, above all, should have loathed and detested her beauty, the source of all those tears, hears these words, calls her his daughter, and places her by his side, excuses her guilt, and denies that she is the cause of his sorrows.

Again, when Plato in the Symposium makes Alcibiades confess how he had wished Socrates to treat him, he does not, I think, record these facts with a view to blaming Aleibiades, but rather to show the unconquerable self-control of Socrates, which would not yield even to the charms which the greatest beauty of his day so frankly placed at his disposal.

We are even given the means of realising the extraordinary stature of the heroes of old by the description of their weapons, such as the shield of Ajax and the spear-shaft of Achilles hewn in the forests of Pelion. Virgil also has made admirable use of this device in his description of the Cyclops. For what an image it gives us of the bulk of that body

Whose hand was propped by a branchless trunk of pine.

So, too, what a giant must Demoleos have been,

Whose corselet manifold

Scarce two men on their shoulders could uphold

And yet the hero buckled it upon him and

Drave the scattering Trojans at full speed.

And again, Cicero could hardly even have conceived of such luxury in Antony himself as he describes when he says, You might see beds in the chambers of his slaves strewn with the purple coverlets that had once been Pompey's own. Slaves are using purple coverlets in their chambers, aye, and coverlets that had once been Pompey's! No more, surely, can be said than this, and yet it leaves us to infer how infinitely greater was the luxury of their master.

This form of amplification is near akin to emphasis: but emphasis derives its effect from the actual words, while in this case the effect is produced by inference from the facts, and is consequently far more impressive, inasmuch as facts are more impressive than words. Accumulation of words and sentences identical in meaning may also be regarded under the head of amplification. For although the climax is not in this case reached by a series of steps, it is none the less attained by the piling up of words. Take the following example:

What was that sword of yours doing, Tubero, the sword you drew on the field of Pharsalus? Against whose body did you aim its point? What meant those arms you bore? Whither were your thoughts, your eyes, your hand, your fiery courage directed on that day? What passion, what desires were yours? This passage recalls the figure styled συναθροισμός by the Greeks, but in that figure it is a number of different things that are accumulated, whereas in this passage all the accumulated details have but one reference. The heightening of effect may also be produced by making the words rise to a climax. There stood the porter of the prison, the praetor's executioner, the death and terror of the citizens and allies of Rome, the lictor Sextius.

Attenuation is effected by the same method, since there are as many degrees of descent as ascent. I shall therefore content myself with quoting but one example, namely, the words used by Cicero to describe the speech of Rullus: A few, however, who stood nearest to him suspected that he had intended to say something about the agrarian law. This passage may be regarded as providing an example of attenuation or of augmentation, according as we consider its literal meaning or fix our attention on the obscurity attributed to Rullus.

I know that some may perhaps regard hyperbole as a species of amplification, since hyperbole can be employed to create an effect in either direction. But as the name is also applied to one of the tropes, I must postpone its consideration for the present. I would proceed to the immediate discussion of this subject but for the fact that others have given separate treatment to this form of artifice, [which employs words not in their literal, but in a metaphorical sense]. I shall therefore at this point indulge a desire now almost universal, and discuss a form of ornament which many regard as the chief, nay, almost the sole adornment of oratory.

V. When the ancients used the word sententia, they meant a feeling, or opinion. The word is frequently used in this sense by orators, and traces of this meaning are still found even in the speech of every day. For when we are going to take an oath we use the phrase ex animi nostri sententia (in accordance with what we hold is the solemn truth), and when we offer congratulations, we say that we do so ex sententia (with all our heart). The ancients, indeed, often expressed the same meaning by saying that they uttered their sensa; for they regarded senses as referring merely to the senses of the body.

But modern usage applies sensus to concepts of the mind, while sentcntia is applied to striking reflexions such as are more especially introduced at the close of our periods, a practice rare in earlier days, but carried even to excess in our own. Accordingly, I think that I ought to say something of the various forms which such reflexions may tale and the manner in which they should be used.

Although all the different forms are included under the same name, the oldest type of sententia, and that in which the term is most correctly applied, is the aphorism, called γνώμη by the Greeks. Both the Greek and the Latin names are derived from the fact that such utterances resemble the decrees or resolutions of public bodies. The term, however, is of wide application (indeed, such reflexions may be deserving of praise even when they have no reference to any special context), and is used in various ways. Sometimes it refers merely to things, as in the sentence: There is nothing that wins the affections of the people more than goodness of heart. Occasionally, again, they may have a personal reference, as in the following utterance of Domitius Afer: The prince who would know all, must needs ignore much.

Some have called this form of reflexion a part of the enthymeme, others the major premise or conclusion of the epichireme, as it sometimes, though not invariably, is. More correct is the statement that at times it is simple, as in the example just quoted, while at other times a reason for the statement may be added, such as the following: For in every struggle, the stronger seems not to suffer wrong, even when this is actually the case, but to inflict it, simply in virtue of his superior power. Sometimes, again, it may be double, as in the statement that

Complaisance wins us friends, truth enmity.

There are some even who classify them under ten heads, though the principle on which they make this division is such that it would justify a still larger number: they class them as based on interrogation, comparison, denial, similarity, admiration, and the like, for they can be treated under every kind of figure. A striking type is that which is produced by opposition:

Death is not bitter, but the approach to death.

Others are cast in a form of a direct statement, such as

The miser lacks

That which he has no less than what he has not.

But they acquire greater force by a change in the figure employed, as in the following:

Is it so bitter, then, to die?

For this is more vigorous than the simple statement, Death is not bitter. A similar effect may be produced by transference of' the statement from the general to the particular. For example, although the direct statement would be, To hurt is easy, but to do good is hard. Ovid gives this reflexion increased force when lie makes Medea say,

I had the power to save, and ask you then

If I have power to ruin?

Cicero again gives the general statement a personal turn when he says: Caesar, the splendour of your present fortune confers on you nothing greater than the power and nothing better than the will to save as many of your fellow-citizens as possible. For here he attributes to Caesar what was really attributable to the circumstances of his power. In this class of reflexion we must be careful, as always, not to employ them too frequently, nor at random, nor place them in the mouth of every kind of person, while we must make certain that they are not untrue, as is so often the case with those speakers who style them reflexions of universal application and recklessly employ whatever seems to support their case as though its truth were beyond question.

Such reflexions are best suited to those speakers whose authority is such that their character itself will lend weight to their words. For who would tolerate a boy, or a youth, or even a man of low birth who presumed to speak with all the authority of a judge and to thrust his precepts down our throats?

The term enthymeme may be applied to any concept of the mind, but in its strict sense means a reflexion drawn from contraries. Consequently, it has a supremacy among reflexions which we may compare to that of Homer among poets and Rome among cities.

I have already said enough on this topic in dealing with arguments. But the use of the enthymeme is not confined to proof, it may sometimes be employed for the purpose of ornament, as in the following instance: Caesar, shall the language of those whom it is your glory to have spared goad you to imitate their own cruelty? Cicero's motive in saying this is not that it introduces any fresh reason for clemency, but because he has already demonstrated by other arguments how unjust such conduct would be, while he adds it at the period's close as an epiphonema, not by way of proof, but as a crowning insult to his opponents. For an epiphonema is an exclamation attached to the close of a statement or a proof by way of climax. Here are two examples:

Such toil it was to found the Roman race!

and The virtuous youth preferred to risk his life by slaying him to suffering such dishonour.

There is also what our modern rhetoricians call the noema, a term which may be taken to mean every kind of conception, but is employed by them in the special sense of things which they wish to be understood, though they are not actually said, as in the declamation where the sister defends herself against the brother whom she had often bought out from the gladiatorial school, when he brought an action against her demanding the infliction of a similar mutilation because she had cut off his thumb while he slept: You deserved, she cries, to have all your fingers, meaning thereby, You deserved to be a gladiator all your days.

There is also what is called a clausula. If this merely means a conclusion, it is a perfectly correct and sometimes a necessary device, as in the following case: You must, therefore, first confess your own offence before you accuse Ligarius of anything. But to-day something more is meant, for our rhetoricians want every passage, every sentence to strike the ear by an impressive close.

In fact, they think it a disgrace, nay, almost a crime, to pause to breathe except at the end of a passage that is designed to call forth applause. The result is a number of tiny epigrams, affected, irrelevant and disjointed. For there are not enough striking reflexions in the world to provide a close to every period.

The following forms of reflexion are even more modern. There is the type which depends on surprise for its effect, as, for example, when Vibius Crispus, in denouncing the man who wore a breastplate when strolling in the forum and alleged that he did so because he feared for his life, cried, Who gave you leave to be such a coward? Another instance is the striking remark made by Africanus to Nero with reference to the death of Agrippina: Caesar, your provinces of Gaul entreat you to bear your good fortune with courage.

Others are of an allusive type: for example, Domitius Afer, in his defence of Cloatilla, whom Claudius had pardoned when she was accused of having buried her husband, who had been one of the rebels, addressed her sons in his peroration with the words: Nonetheless, it is your duty, boys, to give your mother burial. Some, again, depend on the fact that they are transferred from one context to another Crispus, in his defence of Spatale, whose lover had made her his heir and then proceeded to die at the age of eighteen, remarked: What a marvellous fellow to gratify his passion thus!

Another type of reflexion may be produced by the doubling of a phrase, as in the letter written by Seneca for Nero to be sent to the senate on the occasion of his mother's death, with a view to creating the impression that he had been in serious danger:— As yet I cannot believe or rejoice that I am safe. Better, however, is the type which relies for its effect on contrast of opposites, as I know from whom to fly, but whom to follow I know not; or, What of the fact that the poor wretch, though he could not speak, could not keep silence? But to produce the most striking effect this type should be given point by the introduction of a comparison, such as is made by Trachalus in his speech against Spatale, where he says: Is it your pleasure, then, ye laws, the faithful guardians of chastity, that wives should receive a title and harlots a quarter?

In these instances, however, the reflexion may equally well be good or bad.

On the other hand, there are some which will always be bad, such as those which turn on play upon words, as in the following case: Conscript fathers, for I must address you thus that you may remember the duty owed to fathers. Worse still, as being more unreal and far-fetched, is the remark made by the gladiator mentioned above in his prosecution of his sister: I have fought to the last finger.

There is another similar type, which is perhaps the worst of all, where the play upon words is combined with a false comparison. When I was a young man I heard a distinguished pleader, after handing a mother some splinters of bone taken from the head of her son (which he did merely to provide an occasion for his epigram), cry: Unhappiest of women, your son is not yet dead and yet you have gathered up his bones!

Moreover, most of our orators delight in devices of the pettiest kind, which seriously considered are merely ludicrous, but at the moment of their production flatter their authors by a superficial semblance of wit. Take, for instance, the exclamation from the scholastic theme, where a man, after being ruined by the barrenness of his land, is shipwrecked and hangs himself: Let him whom neither earth nor sea receives, hang in mid air.

A similar absurdity is to be found in the declamation, to which I have already referred, in which a father poisons his son who insists on tearing his flesh with his teeth: The man who eats such flesh, deserves such drink. Or again, take this passage from the theme of the luxurious man who is alleged to have pretended to starve himself to death: Tie a noose for yourself: you have good reason to be angry with your throat. 'rake poison: it is fit that a luxurious man should die of drink!

Others are merely fatuous, such as the remark of the declaimer who urges the courtiers of Alexander to provide him with a tomb by burning down Babylon. I am burying Alexander. Shall any man watch such a burial from his housetop? As if this were the climax of indignities! Others fail from sheer extravagance. For example, I once heard a rhetorician who was declaiming about the Germans, say: I know not where they carry their heads, and again when belauding a hero, He beats back whole wars with the boss of his shield.

However, I shall never come to an end if I try to describe every possible form of this kind of absurdity. I will therefore turn to discuss a point of more importance. Rhetoricians are divided in opinion on this subject: some devote practically all their efforts to the elaboration of reflexions, while others condemn their employment altogether. I cannot agree entirely with either view.

If they are crowded too thick together, such reflexions merely stand in each other's way, just as in the case of crops and the fruits of trees lack of room to grow results in a stunted development. Again in pictures a definite outline is required to throw objects into relief, and consequently artists who include a number of objects in the same design separate them by intervals sufficient to prevent one casting a shadow on the other. Further, this form of display breaks up our speeches into a number of detached sentences; every reflexion is isolated, and consequently a fresh start is necessary after each. This produces a discontinuous style, since our language is composed not of a system of limbs, but of a series of fragments: for your nicely rounded and polished phrases are incapable of cohesion. Further, the colour, though bright enough, has no unity, but consists of a number of variegated splashes. A purple stripe appropriately applied lends brilliance to a dress, but a dress decorated with a quantity of patches can never be becoming to anybody.

Wherefore, although these ornaments may seem to stand out with a certain glitter of their own, they are rather to be compared to sparks flashing through the smoke than to the actual brilliance of flame: they are, in fact, invisible when the language is of uniform splendour, just as the stars are invisible in the light of day. And where eloquence seeks to secure elevation by frequent small efforts, it merely produces an uneven and broken surface which fails to win the admiration due to outstanding objects and lacks the charm that may be found in a smooth surface.

To this must be added the fact that those who devote themselves solely to the production of reflexions cannot avoid giving utterance to many that are trivial, flat or foolish. For their mere number will so embarrass their author that selection will be impossible. Consequently you will often find that such persons will produce a division or an argument as if it were an epigram, the only qualification necessary being that it should come toward the close of the period and be impressively delivered.

You killed your wife, though you were an adulterer yourself. I should loathe you even if you had only divorced her. Here we have a division. Do you wish me to prove that a love-philtre is a poison? The man would still be living, if he had not drunk it. This is an argument. There are, moreover, a number of speakers who not merely deliver many such epigrams, but utter everything as if it were an epigram.

Against these persons, on the other hand, must be set those who shun and dread all ornament of this kind, approving nothing that is not plain, humble and effortless, with the result that by their reluctance to climb for fear of falling they succeed merely in maintaining a perpetual flatness. What sin is there in a good epigram? Does it not help our case, or move the judge, or commend the speaker to his audience? It may be urged, perhaps, that it is a form of ornament eschewed by the ancients. What do you mean by antiquity? If you go back to the earliest periods you will find that Demosthenes frequently employed methods that were known to none before him. How can we give our approval to Cicero, if we think that no change should be made from the methods of Cato and the Gracchi? And yet before the Gracchi and Cato the style of oratory was simpler still.

For my own part I regard these particular ornaments of oratory to be, as it were, the eyes of eloquence. On the other hand, I should not like to see the whole body full of eyes, for fear that it might cripple the functions of the other members, and, if I had no alternative, I should prefer the rudeness of ancient eloquence to the license of the moderns. But a middle course is open to us here no less than in the refinements of dress and mode of life, where there is a certain tasteful elegance that offends no one. Therefore let us as far as possible seek to increase the number of our virtues, although our first care must always be to keep ourselves free from vices, lest in seeking to make ourselves better than the ancients we succeed merely in making ourselves unlike them.

I will now proceed to the next subject for discussion, which is, as I have said, that of tropes, or modes, as the most distinguished Roman rhetoricians call them. Rules for their use are given by the teachers of literature as well. But I postponed the discussion of the subject when I was dealing with literary education, because it seemed to me that the theme would have greater importance if handled in connexion with the ornaments of oratory, and that it ought to be reserved for treatment on a larger scale.

By a trope is meant the artistic alteration of a word or phrase from its proper meaning to another. This is a subject which has given rise to interminable disputes among the teachers of literature, who have quarrelled no less violently with the philosophers than among themselves over the problem of the genera and species into which tropes may be divided, their number and their correct classification.

I propose to disregard such quibbles as in no wise concern the training of an orator, and to proceed to discuss those tropes which are most necessary and meet with most general acceptance, contenting myself merely with noting the fact that some tropes are employed to help out our meaning and others to adorn our style, that some arise from words used properly and others from words used metaphorically, and that the changes involved concern not merely individual words, but also our thoughts and the structure of our sentences.

In view of these facts I regard those writers as mistaken who have held that tropes necessarily involved the substitution of word for word. And I do not ignore the fact that as a rule the tropes employed to express our meaning involve ornament as well, though the converse is not the case, since there are some which are intended solely for the purpose of embellishment.

Let us begin, then, with the commonest and by far the most beautiful of tropes, namely, metaphor, the Greek term for our translatio. It is not merely so natural a turn of speech that it is often employed unconsciously or by uneducated persons, but it is in itself so attractive and elegant that however distinguished the language in which it is embedded it shines forth with a light that is all its own.

For if it be correctly and appropriately applied, it is quite impossible for its effect to be commonplace, mean or unpleasing. It adds to the copiousness of language by the interchange of words and by borrowing, and finally succeeds in accomplishing the supremely difficult task of providing a name for everything. A noun or a verb is transferred from the place to which it properly belongs to another where there is either no literal term or the transferred is better than the literal.

We do this either because it is necessary or to make our meaning clearer or, as I have already said, to produce a decorative effect. When it secures none of these results, our metaphor will be out of place. As an example of a necessary metaphor I may quote the following usages in vogue with peasants when they call a vinebud gemma, a gem (what other term is there which they could use?), or speak of the crops being thirsty or the fruit suffering. For the same reason we speak of a hard or rough man, there being no literal term for these temperaments.

On the other hand, when we say that a man is kindled to anger or on fire with greed or that he has fallen into error, we do so to enhance our meaning. For none of these things can be more literally described in its own words than in those which we import from elsewhere. But it is a purely ornamental metaphor when we speak of brilliance of style, splendour of birth, tempestuous public assemblies, thunderbolts of eloquence, to which I may add the phrase employed by Cicero in his defence of Milo where he speaks of Clodius as the fountain, and in another place as the fertile field and material of his client's glory.

It is even possible to express facts of a somewhat unseemly character by a judicious use of metaphor, as in the following passage:

This do they lest too much indulgence make

The field of generation slothful grow

And choke its idle furrows.

On the whole metaphor is a shorter form of simile, while there is this further difference, that in the latter we compare some object to the thing which we wish to describe, whereas in the former this object is actually substituted for the thing.

It is a comparison when I say that a man did something like a lion, it is a metaphor when I say of him, He is a lion. Metaphors fall into four classes. In the first we substitute one living thing for another, as in the passage where the poet, speaking of a charioteer, says,

The steersman then

With mighty effort wrenched his charger round.

or when Livy says that Scipio was continually barked at by Cato.

Secondly, inanimate things may be substituted for inanimate, as in the Virgilian.

And gave his fleet the rein, or inanimate may be substituted for animate, as in

Did the Argive bulwark fall by sword or fate?

or animate for inanimate, as in the following lines:

The shepherd sits unknowing on the height

Listening the roar from some far mountain brow.

But, above all, effects of extraordinary sublimity are produced when the theme is exalted by a bold and almost hazardous metaphor and inanimate objects are given life and action, as in the phrase

Araxes' flood that scorns a bridge, or in the passage of Cicero, already quoted, where he cries, What was that sword of yours doing, Tubero, the sword you drew on the field of Pharsalus? Against whose body did you aim its point? What meant those arms you bore? Sometimes the effect is doubled, as in Virgil's.

And with venom arm the steel.

For both to arm the steel and to arm with venom are metaphors.

These four kinds of metaphor are further subdivided into a number of species, such as transference from rational beings to rational and from irrational to irrational and the reverse, in which the method is the same, and finally from the whole to its parts and from the parts to the whole. But I am not now teaching boys: my readers are old enough to discover the species for themselves when once they have been given the genus.

While a temperate and timely use of metaphor is a real adornment to style, on the other hand, its frequent use serves merely to obscure our language and weary our audience, while if we introduce them in one continuous series, our language will become allegorical and enigmatic. There are also certain metaphors which fail from meanness, such as that of which I spoke above:

There is a rocky wart upon the mountain's brow.

or they may even be coarse. For it does not follow that because Cicero was perfectly justified in talking of the sink of the state, when he desired to indicate the foulness of certain men, we can approve the following passage from an ancient orator: You have lanced the boils of the state.

Indeed Cicero himself has demonstrated in the most admirable manner how important it is to avoid grossness in metaphor, such as is revealed by the following examples, which he quotes:— The state was gelded by the death of Africanus, or Glaucia, the excrement of the senate-house.

He also points out that a metaphor must not be too great for its subject or, as is more frequently the case, too little, and that it must not be inappropriate. Anyone who realises that these are faults, will be able to detect instances of them only too frequently. But excess in the use of metaphor is also a fault, more especially if they are of the same species.

Metaphors may also be harsh, that is, far-fetched, as in phrases like the snows of the head or

Jove with white snow the wintry Alps bespewed.

The worst errors of all, however, originate in the fact that some authors regard it as permissible to use even in prose any metaphors that are allowed to poets, in spite of the fact that tile latter aim solely at pleasing their readers and are compelled in many cases to employ metaphor by sheer metrical necessity.

For my own part I should not regard a phrase like the shepherd of the people as admissible in pleading, although it has the authority of Homer, nor would I venture to say that winged creatures swim through the air, despite the fact that this metaphor has been most effectively employed by Virgil to describe the flight of bees and of Daedalus.1 For metaphor should always either occupy a place already vacant, or if it fills the room of something else, should be more impressive than that which it displaces.

What I have said above applies perhaps with even greater force to synecdocheè. For while metaphor is designed to move the feelings, give special distinction to things and place them vividly before the eye, synecdocheè has the power to give variety to our language by making us realise many things from one, the whole from a part, the genus from a species, things which follow from things which have preceded; or, on the other hand, the whole procedure may be reversed. It may, however, be more freely employed by poets than by orators.

For while in prose it is perfectly correct to use macro, the point, for the whole sword, and tectum, roof, for a whole house, we may not employ puppis, stern, to describe a ship, nor abies, fir, to describe planks; and again, though ferrunm, the steel, may be used to indicate a sword, quadrupes cannot be used in the sense of horse. It is where numbers are concerned that synecdocheè can be most freely employed in prose. For example, Livy frequently says, The Roman won the day, when he means that the Romans were victorious; on the other hand, Cicero in a letter to Brutus says, We have imposed on the people and are regarded as orators, when he is speaking of himself alone.

This form of trope is not only a rhetorical ornament, but is frequently employed in everyday speech. Some also apply the term synecdoche when something is assumed which has not actually been expressed, since one word is then discovered from other words, as in the sentence,

The Arcadians to the gates began to rush;

when such omission creates a blemish, it is called an ellipse.

For my own part, I prefer to regard this as a figure, and shall therefore discuss it under that head. Again, one thing may be suggested by another, as in the line,

Behold, the steers

Bring back the plough suspended from the yoke, from which we infer the approach of night. I am not sure whether this is permissible to an orator except in arguments, when it serves as an indication of some fact. However, this has nothing to do with the question of style.

It is but a short step from synecdocheè to metonymy, which consists in the substitution of one name for another, and, as Cicero tells us, is called hypallage by the rhetoricians. These devices are employed to indicate an invention by substituting the name of the inventor, or a possession by substituting the name of the possessor. Virgil, for example, writes:

Ceres by water spoiled, and Horace:

Neptune admitted to the land

Protects the fleets from blasts of Aquilo.

If, however, the process is reversed, the effect is harsh.

But it is important to enquire to what extent tropes of this kind should be employed by the orator. For though we often hear Vulcan used for fire and to say vario Marte pugnatum est for they fought with varying success is elegant and idiomatic, while Venus is a more decent expression than coitus, it would be too bold for the severe style demanded in the courts to speak of Liber and Ceres when we mean bread and wine. Again, while usage permits us to substitute that which contains for that which is contained, as in phrases such as civilised cities, or a cup was drunk to the lees, or a happy age, the converse procedure would rarely be ventured on by any save a poet: take, for example, the phrase:

Ucalegon burns next.

It is, however, perhaps more permissible to describe what is possessed by reference to its possessor, as, for example, to say of a man whose estate is being squandered, the man is being eaten up. Of this form there are innumerable species.

For example, we say sixty thousand men were slain by Hannibal at Cannae, and speak of Virgil when we mean Virgil's poems; again, we say that supplies have come, when they have been brought, that a sacrilege, and not a sacrilegious man has been detected, and that a man possesses a knowledge of arms, not of the art of arms.

The type which indicates cause by effect is common both in poets and orators. As examples from poetry I may quote:

Pale death with equal foot knocks at the poor man's door and

There pale diseases dwell and sad old age;

while the orator will speak of headlong anger, cheerful youth or slothful ease.

The following type of trope has also some kinship with synecdochè. For when I speak of a man's looks instead of his look, I use the plural for the singular, but my aim is not to enable one thing to be inferred from many (for the sense is clear enough), but I merely vary the form of the word. Again, when I call a gilded roof a golden roof, I diverge a little from the truth, because gilding forms only a part of the roof. But to follow out these points is a task involving too much minute detail even for a work whose aim is not the training of an orator.

Antonomasia, which substitutes something else for a proper name, is very common in poets: it may be done in two ways: by the substitution of an epithet as equivalent to the name which it replaces, such as Tydides, Pelides, or by indicating the most striking characteristics of an individual, as in the phrase

Father of gods and king of men, or from acts clearly indicating the individual, as in the phrase,

The arms which he, the traitor, left

Fixed on the chamber wall.

This form of trope is rare in oratory, but is occasionally employed, For although an orator would not say Tydides or Pelides, he will speak of certain definite persons as the impious parricides, while I should have no hesitation in speaking of Scipio as the destroyer of Carthage and Numantia, or of Cicero as the prince of Roman orators. Cicero himself, at any rate, availed himself of this licence, as, for example, in the following case: Your faults are not many, said the old praeceptor to the hero, where neither name is given, though both are clearly understood.

On the other hand, onomatopoea, that is to say, the creation of a word, although regarded with the highest approbation by the Greeks, is scarcely permissible to a Roman. It is true that many words were created in this way by the original founders of the language, who adapted them to suit the sensation which they expressed. For instance, mugitus, lowing, sibilus, a hiss, and murmur owe their origin to this practice.

But to-day we consider that all has been done that can be done in this line, and do not venture on fresh creations, in spite of the fact that many of the words thus formed in antiquity are daily becoming obsolete. Indeed, we scarcely permit ourselves to use new derivatives, so they are called, which are formed in various ways from words in common use, such as Sullaturit, he wishes to be a second Sulla, or proscripturit, he wishes to have a proscription, while laureati posies, laurelled door-posts, for lauru coronati, crowned with laurel, are similar formations.

These facts make catachresis (of which abuse is a correct translation) all the more necessary. By this term is meant the practice of adapting the nearest available term to describe something for which no actual term exists, as in the line

A horse they build by Pallas' art divine, or as in the expression found in tragedy,

To Aigialeus

His sire bears funeral offerings,

The following examples are of a similar character.

Flasks are called acetabula, whatever they contain, and caskets pyxides, of whatever material they are made, while parricide includes the murder of a mother or a brother. We must be careful to distinguish between abuse and metaphor, since the former is employed where there is no proper term available, and the latter when there is another term available. As for poets, they indulge in the abuse of words even in cases where proper terms do exist, and substitute words of somewhat similar meaning. But this is rare in prose.

Some, indeed, would give the name of catachresis even to cases such as where we call temerity valour or prodigality liberality. I, however, cannot agree with them; for in these instances word is not substituted for word, but thing for thing, since no one regards prodigality and liberality as meaning the same, but one man calls certain actions liberal and another prodigal, although neither for a moment doubts the difference between the two qualities.

There is but one of the tropes involving change of meaning which remains to be discussed, namely, metalepsis or transumption, which provides a transition from one trope to another. It is (if we except comedy) but rarely used in Latin, and is by no means to be commended, though it is not infrequently employed by the Greeks, who, for example, call Χείρων the centaur Ἥσσων and substitute the epithet θοαί (swift) for ὄξειαι in referring to sharp-pointed islands. But who would endure a Roman if he called Verres sus or changed the name of Aelius Catus to Aelius doctus?

It is the nature of metalepsis to form a kind of intermediate step between the term transferred and the thing to which it is transferred, having no meaning in itself, but merely providing a transition. It is a trope with which to claim acquaintance, rather than one which we are ever likely to require to use. The commonest example is the following: cano is a synonym for canto and canto for dico, therefore cano is a synonym for dico, the intermediate step being provided by canto.

We need not waste any more time over it. I can see no use in it except, as I have already said, in comedy.

The remaining tropes are employed solely to adorn and enhance our style without any reference to the meaning. For the epithet, of which the correct translation is appositum, though some call it sequens, is clearly an ornament. Poets employ it with special frequency and freedom, since for them it is sufficient that the epithet should suit the word to which it is applied: consequently we shall not blame them when they speak of white teeth or liquid wine.

But in oratory an epithet is redundant unless it has some point. Now it will only have point when it adds something to the meaning, as for instance in the following: O abominable crime, O hideous lust!

But its decorative effect is greatest when it is metaphorical, as in the phrases unbridled greed or those mad piles of masonry. The epithet is generally made into a trope by the addition of something to it, as when Virgil speaks of disgraceful poverty or sad old age. But the nature of this form of embellishment is such that, while style is bare and inelegant without any epithets at all, it is overloaded when a large number are employed.

For then it becomes long-winded and cumbrous, in fact you might compare it to an army with as many camp-followers as soldiers, an army, that is to say, which has doubled its numbers without doubling its strength. None the less, not merely single epithets are employed, but we may find a number of them together, as in the following passage from Virgil:

Anchises, worthy deigned

Of Venus' glorious bed, [beloved of heaven,

Twice rescued from the wreck of Pergamum.]

Be this as it may, two epithets directly attached to one noun are unbecoming even in verse. There are some writers who refuse to regard an epithet as a trope, on the ground that it involves no change. It is not always a trope, but if separated from the word to which it belongs, it has a significance of its own and forms an antonomasia. For if you say, The man who destroyed Numantia and Carthage, it will be an antonomasia, whereas, if you add the word Scipio, the phrase will be an epithet. An epithet therefore cannot stand by itself.

Allegory, which is translated in Latin by inversio, either presents one thing in words and another in meaning, or else something absolutely opposed to the meaning of the words. The first type is generally produced by a series of metaphors. Take as an example:

O ship, new waves will bear thee back to sea.

What dost thou? Make the haven, come what may, and the rest of the ode, in which Horace represents the state under the semblance of a ship, the civil wars as tempests, and peace and good-will as the haven.

Such, again, is the claim of Lucretius:

Pierian fields I range untrod by man, and such again the passage where Virgil says,

But now

A mighty length of plain we have travelled o'er;

'Tis time to loose our horses' steaming necks.

On the other hand, in the Bucolics he introduces an allegory without any metaphor:

Truth, I had heard

Your loved Menalcas by his songs had saved

All those fair acres, where the hills begin

To sink and droop their ridge with easy slope

Down to the waterside and that old beech

With splintered crest.

For in this passage, with the exception of the proper name, the words bear no more than their literal meaning. But the name does not simply denote the shepherd Menalcas, but is a pseudonym for Virgil himself. Oratory makes frequent use of such allegory, but generally with this modification, that there is an admixture of plain speaking. We get allegory pure and unadulterated in the following passage of Cicero:

What I marvel at and complain of is this, that there should exist any man so set on destroying his enemy as to scuttle the ship on which he himself is sailing.

The following is an example of the commonest type, namely, the mixed allegory: I always thought that Milo would have other storms and tempests to weather, at least in the troubled waters of political meetings. Had he not added the words at least in the troubled waters of political meetings, we should have had pure allegory: their addition, however, converted it into a mixed allegory. In this type of allegory the ornamental element is provided by the metaphorical words and the meaning is indicated by those which are used literally.

But far the most ornamental effect is produced by the artistic admixture of simile, metaphor and allegory, as in the following example: What strait, what tide-race, think you, is full of so many conflicting motions or vexed by such a variety of eddies, waves and fluctuations, as confuse our popular elections with their wild ebb and flow? The passing of one day, or the interval of a single night, will often throw everything into confusion, and one little breath of rumour will sometimes turn the whole trend of opinion.

For it is all-important to follow the principle illustrated by this passage and never to mix your metaphors. But there are many who, after beginning with a tempest, will end with a fire or a falling house, with the result that they produce a hideously incongruous effect.

For the rest, allegory is often used by men of little ability and in the conversation of everyday life. For those hackneyed phrases of forensic pleading, to fight hand to hand, to attack the throat, or to let blood are all of them allegorical, although they do not strike the attention: for it is novelty and change that please in oratory, and what is unexpected always gives special delight. Consequently we have thrown all restraint to the wind in such matters, and have destroyed the charm of language by the extravagant efforts which we have made to attain it.

Illustrative examples also involve allegory if not preceded by an explanation; for there are numbers of sayings available for use like the Dionysius is at Corinth, which is such a favourite with the Greeks. When, however, an allegory is too obscure, we call it a riddle: such riddles are, in my opinion, to be regarded as blemishes, in view of the fact that lucidity is a virtue; nevertheless they are used by poets, as, for example, by Virgil in the following lines:

Say in what land, and if thou tell me true,

I'll hold thee as Apollo's oracle,

Three ells will measure all the arch of heaven.

Even orators sometimes use them, as when Caelius speaks of the Clytemnestra who sold her favours for a farthing, who was a Coan in the dining-room and a Nolan in her bedroom. For although we know the answers, and although they were better known at the time when the words were uttered, they are riddles for all that; and other riddles are, after all, intelligible if you can get someone to explain them.

On the other hand, that class of allegory in which the meaning is contrary to that suggested by the words, involve an element of irony, or, as our rhetoricians call it, illusio. This is made evident to the understanding either by the delivery, the character of the speaker or the nature of the subject. For if any one of these three is out of keeping with the words, it at once becomes clear that the intention of the speaker is other than what he actually says In the majority of tropes it is, however, important to bear in mind not merely what is said, but about whom it is said, since what is said may in another context be literally true. It is permissible to censure with counterfeited praise and praise under a pretence of blame. The following will serve as an example of the first.

Since Gaius Verres, the urban praetor, being a man of energy and blameless character, had no record in his register of this substitution of this man for another on the panel. As an example of the reverse process we may take the following: We are regarded as orators and have imposed on the people.

Sometimes, again, we may speak in mockery when we say the opposite of what we desire to be understood, as in Cicero's denunciation of Clodius: Believe me, your well known integrity has cleared you of all blame, your modesty has saved you, your past life has been your salvation.

Further, we may employ allegory, and disguise bitter taunts in gentle words I y way of wit, or we may indicate our meaning by saying exactly the contrary or... If the Greek names for these methods are unfamiliar to any of my readers, I would remind him that they are σαρκασμός, ἀστεϊσμός, ἀντίφρασις and παροιμία (sarcasm, urbane wit, contradiction and proverbs).

There are, however, some writers who deny that these are species of allegory, and assert that they are actually tropes in themselves: for they argue shrewdly that allegory involves an element of obscurity, whereas in all these cases our meaning is perfectly obvious. To this may be added the fact that when a genus is divided into species, it ceases to have any peculiar properties of its own: for example, we may divide tree into its species, pine, olive, cypress, etc., leaving it no properties of its own, whereas allegory always has some property peculiar to itself. The only explanation of this fact is that it is itself a species. But this, of course, is a matter of indifference to those that use it.

To these the Greeks add μυκτηρισμός or mockery under the thinnest of disguises. When we use a number of words to describe something for which one, or at any rate only a few words of description would suffice, it is called periphrasis, that is, a circuitous mode of speech. It is sometimes necessary, being of special service when it conceals something which would be indecent, if expressed in so many words: compare the phrase To meet the demands of nature from Sallust.

But at times it is employed solely for decorative effect, a practice most frequent among the poets:

Now was the time

When the first sleep to weary mortals comes

Stealing its way, the sweetest boon of heaven.

Still it is far from uncommon even in oratory, though in such cases it is always used with greater restraint. For whatever might have been expressed with greater brevity, but is expanded for purposes of ornament, is a periphrasis, to which we give the name circumlocution, though it is a term scarcely suitable to describe one of the virtues of oratory. But it is only called periphrasis so long as it produces a decorative effect: when it passes into excess, it is known as perissology: for whatever is not a help, is a positive hindrance.

Again, hyperbaton, that is, the transposition of a word, is often demanded by the structure of the sentence and the claims of elegance, and is consequently counted among the ornaments of style. For our language would often be harsh, rough, limp or disjointed, if the words were always arranged in their natural order and attached each to each just as they occur, despite the fact that there is no real bond of union. Consequently some words require to be postponed, others to be anticipated, each being set in its appropriate place.

For we are like those who build a wall of unhewn stone: we cannot hew or polish our words in order to make them fit more compactly, and so we must take them as they are and choose suitable positions for them.

Further, it is impossible to make our prose rhythmical except by artistic alterations in the order of words, and the reason why those four words in which Plato in the noblest of his works states that he had gone down to the Piraeus were found written in a number of different orders upon his wax tablets, was simply that he desired to make the rhythm as perfect as possible.

When, however, the transposition is confined to two words only, it is called anastrophe, that is, a reversal of order. This occurs in everyday speech in mecum and secure, while in orators and historians we meet with it in the phrase quibus de rebus. It is the transposition of a word to some distance from its original place, in order to secure an ornamental effect, that is strictly called hyperbaton: the following passage will provide an example: animadverti, indices, omnem accusatoris orationenm in duas divisam esse partes. (I noted, gentlemen, that the speech of the accuser was divided into two parts.) In this case the strictly correct order would be in duas partes divisam esse, but this would have been harsh and ugly.

The poets even go so far as to secure this effect by the division of words, as in the line: Hyperboreo septem subiecta trioni

(Under the Hyperborean Wain), a licence wholly inadmissible in oratory. Still there is good reason for calling such a transposition a trope, since the meaning is not complete until the two words have been put together.

On the other hand, when the transposition makes no alteration in the sense, and merely produces a variation in the structure, it is rather to be called a verbal figure, as indeed many authorities have held. Of the faults resulting from long or confused hyperbata have spoken in the appropriate place. I have kept hyperbole to the last, on the ground of its boldness. It means an elegant straining of the truth, and may be employed indifferently for exaggeration or attenuation. It can be used in various ways.

We may say more than the actual facts, as when Cicero says, "He vomited and filled his lap and the whole tribunal with fragments of food, or when Virgil speaks of win rocks that threaten heaven.

Again, we may exalt our theme by the use of simile, as in the phrase:

Thou wouldst have deemed

That Cyclad isles uprooted swam the deep.

Or we may produce the same result by introducing a comparison, as in the phrase:

Swifter than the levin's wings;

or by the use of indications, as in the lines:

She would fly

Even o'er the tops of the unsickled corn,

Nor as she ran would bruise the tender ears.

Or we may employ a metaphor, as the verb to fly is employed in the passage just quoted.

Sometimes, again, one hyperbole may be heightened by the addition of another, as when Cicero in denouncing Antony says:

What Charybdis was ever so voracious? Charybdis, do I say? Nay, if Charybdis ever existed, she was but a single monster. By heaven, even Ocean's self, methinks, could scarce have engulfed so many things, so widely scattered in such distant places, in such a twinkling of the eye.

I think, too, that I am right in saying that I noted a brilliant example of the same kind in the Hymns of Pindar, the prince of lyric poets. For when he describes the onslaught made by Hercules upon the Meropes, the legendary inhabitants of the island of Cos, he speaks of the hero as like not to fire, winds or sea, but to the thunderbolt, making the latter the only true equivalent of his speed and power, the former being treated as quite inadequate.

Cicero has imitated his method in the following passage from the Verrines: After long lapse of years the Sicilians saw dwelling in their midst, not a second Dionysius or Phalaris (for that island has produced many a cruel tyrant in years gone by), but a new monster with all the old ferocity once familiar to those regions. For, to my thinking, neither Scylla nor Charybdis were ever such foes as he to the ships that sailed those same narrow seas.

The methods of hyperbole by attenuation are the same in number. Compare the Virgilian

Scarce cling they to their bones, or the lines from a humorous work of Cicero's,

Fundum Vetto vocat quem possit mittere funda;

Ni tamen exciderit, qua cava funda patet.

Vetto gives the name of farm to an estate which might easily be hurled from a sling, though it might well fall through the hole in the hollow sling, so small is it.

But even here a certain proportion must be observed. For although every hyperbole involves the incredible, it must not go too far in this direction, which provides the easiest road to extravagant affectation.

I shrink from recording the faults to which the lack of this sense of proportion has given rise, more especially as they are so well known and obvious. It is enough to say that hyperbole lies, though without any intention to deceive. We must therefore be all the more careful to consider how far we may go in exaggerating facts which our audience may refuse to believe. Again, hyperbole will often cause a laugh. If that was what the orator desired, we may give him credit for wit; otherwise we can only call him a fool.

Hyperbole is employed even by peasants and uneducated persons, for the good reason that everybody has an innate passion for exaggeration or attenuation of actual facts, and no one is ever contented with the simple truth. But such disregard of truth is pardonable, for it does not involve the definite assertion of the thing that is not. Hyperbole is, moreover, a virtue, when the subject on which we have to speak is abnormal. For we are allowed to amplify, when the magnitude of the facts passes all words, and in such circumstances our language will be more effective if it goes beyond the truth than if it falls short of it. However, I have said enough on this topic, since I have already dealt with it in my work on the causes of the decline of oratory.