Institutio Oratoria

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:

1. O ship, new waves will bear thee back to sea.
2. What dost thou? Make the haven, come what may,

Hor. Od. i. xiv. 1.

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: [*](Lucr. IV. 1. )

1. Pierian fields I range untrod by man,

and such again the passage where Virgil says,

1. But now
2. A mighty length of plain we have travelled o'er;
3. 'Tis time to loose our horses' steaming necks.

Georg. II. 541.

On the other hand, in the Bucolics [*](Buc. IX. 7. ) he introduces an allegory without any metaphor:

1. Truth, I had heard
2. Your loved Menalcas by his songs had saved
3. All those fair acres, where the hills begin
4. To sink and droop their ridge with easy slope
5. Down to the waterside and that old beech
6. 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: [*](From an unknown speech.)

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: [*](Pro Mil. ii, 5. )

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: [*](Pro Mur. xvii. 35. )

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.