Institutio Oratoria

Nay, we are even allowed in this form of speech to bring down the gods from heaven and raise the dead, while cities also and peoples may find a voice. There are some authorities who restrict the term imepersonation to cases where both persons and words are fictitious, and prefer to call imaginary conversations between men by the Greek name of dialogue, which some [*]( Cornific. op. cit. iv. 43 and 52. ) translate

by the Latin semnocinatio.

For my own part, I have included both under the same generally accepted term, since we cannot imagine a speech without we also imagine a person to utter it. But when we lend a voice to things to which nature has denied it, we may soften down the figure in the way illustrated by the following passage:

For if my country, which is far dearer to me than life itself, if all Italy, if the whole commonwealth were to address me thus, 'Marcus Tullius, what dost thou?

[*](in Cat. T. xi. 27. ) A bolder figure of the same kind may be illustrated by the following:

Your country, Catiline, pleads with you thus, and though she utters never a word, cries to you, 'For not a few years past no crime has come to pass save through your doing!'

[*](in Cat. I. vii. 18. )

It is also convenient at times to pretend that we have before our eyes the images of things, persons or utterances, or to marvel that the same is not the case with our adversaries or the judges; it is with this design that we use phrases such as

It seems to me,

or

Does it not seem to you?

But such devices make a great demand on our powers of eloquence. For with things which are false and incredible by nature there are but two alternatives: either they will move our hearers with exceptional force because they are beyond the truth, or they will be regarded as empty nothings because they are not the truth.

But we may introduce not only imaginary sayings, but imaginary writings as well, as is done by Asinius in his defence of Liburnia:

Let my mother, who was the object of my love and my delight, who lived for me and gave me life twice in one day [*]( The speech being lost, the allusion in bis — dedit is unintelligible. ) (and so on) inherit nought of my property.

This is in itself a figure, and is doubly so whenever, as in the present case, it imitates a document produced by the opposing party.

For a will had been read out by the prosecution, in the following form:

Let Publius Novanius Gallio, to whom as my benefactor I will and owe all that is good, as a testimony to the great affection which he has borne me (then follow other details) be my heir.

In this case the figure borders on parody, a name drawn from songs sung in imitation of others, but employed by an abuse of language to designate imitation in verse or prose.

Again, we often personify the abstract, as Virgil [*](Aen. iv. 174. ) does with Fame, or as Xenophon [*](Mem. ii. 1. ) records that Prodicus did with Virtue and Pleasure, or as Ennius does when, in one of his satires, he represents Life and Death contending with one another. We may also introduce some imaginary person without identifying him, as we do in the phrases,

At this point some one will interpose,

or,

Some one will say.

Or speech may be inserted without any mention of the speaker, as in the line: [*](Aen. ii. 29. The words represent what some Trojan said after the departure of the Greeks. )

1. Here the Dolopian host
2. Camped, here the fierce Achilles pitched his tent.

This involves a mixture of figures, since to impersonalion we add the figure known as ellipse, which in this case consists in the omission of any indication as to who is speaking. At times impersonation takes the form of narrative. Thus we find indirect speeches in the historians, as at the opening of Livy's first book [*]( i. 9. These words represent the argument of envoys sent out by Romulus to neighbouring cities. ) :

That cities, like other things, spring from the humblest origins, and that those who are helped by their own valour and the favour of heaven subsequently win great power and a great name for themselves.

Apostrophe also,