Institutio Oratoria

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:—

1. Thence like fierce wolves beneath the cloud of night,

Aen. ii. 355.

1. Like the bird that flies
2. Around the shore and the fish-haunted reef,
3. Skimming the deep.

Aen. iv. 254.

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

1. As when Apollo wintry Lycia leaves,
2. And Xanthus' streams, or visits Delos' isle,
3. His mother's home,

Aen. iv. 143.

But even the type of simile which I discussed in connexion with arguments [*]( xi. 22. ) 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,

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.

Rock and deserts reply to the voice of man, savage beasts are oft-times tamed by the power of music and stay their onslaught,

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

Even the sources of mighty rivers are navigable,

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,

1. Thence like fierce wolves beneath the cloud of night,

Aen. ii. 355.

1. As when, their barriers down, the chariots speed
2. Lap after lap; in vain the charioteer
3. Tightens the curb: his steeds ungovernable
4. Sweep him away nor heeds the car the rein.

Georg. i. 512.

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 [*](Pro Mur. xiii. 29. ) 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

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law.

There is also another simile in the same speech, [*](Pro Mur. xvii. 36. ) 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,

He fled from the court like a man escaping naked from a fire.

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.

A virtue which closely resembles the last, but is on a grander scale, is emphasis, which succeeds

An example of the former is found in Homer, [*](Od. xi. 523. ) 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: [*](Aen. ii. 262. )

1. Descending by a rope let down,

throughout the cave,

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——

Emphasis is also found in the phrases of every day, such as

Be a man!

He is but mortal,

We must live!

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?

Shall I regard you as a consul, when you refuse to regard me as a senator?

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.