Institutio Oratoria

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,

[*]( An Apulian term for the Scirocco. What is the peculiarity of a sack-ship is unknown. It is possible that with Haupt we should read stlataria, "a broad-beamed merchant-vessel. ) 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. [*](Reference unknown.)

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. [*](See viii. vi. 62.) Still worse is the result when the order of the words is confused as in the line [*](Aen. i. 109. The awkwardness of the order cannot be brought out in English. )

1. In the midmost sea
2. 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 [*](Georg. iii. 79–83. ) describes a colt, the words

1. 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,

1. Then, if tile sound of arms be heard afar,
2. 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, [*](See VII. ix. 10.)

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, [*](i.e. and not the man by the book! ) the sentence is badly put together, and its author has made it as ambiguous as he could.