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;
ad
Att. VIII. vii. 2. What of the fact
that the poor wretch, though he could not speak,
in Pisonem, since St. Jerome in a letter to
Oceanus says postea vero Pisoniano vitio, cum
loqui non post, tacere non poterat. But here again the
point is obscure. Is it your pleasure, then, ye laws, the faithful guardians
of chastity, that wives should receive a title
lex Julia et Papia
Poppaea childless wives were only entitled to a tenth
of their husband's estate.
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
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,
whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders
or that they are so tall that their heads are lost in the clouds?
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,