Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
Again, our style need not always dwell on the heights: at times it is desirable that it should sink. For there are occasions when the very meanness of the words employed adds force to what we say. When Cicero, in his denunciation of Piso, [*](Fr. 100. ) says,
When your whole family rolls up in a dray,do you think that his use of the word dray was accidental, and was not designedly used to increase his audience's contempt for the man he wished to bring to ruin? The same is true when he says elsewhere,
You put down your head and butt him.
This device may also serve to carry off a jest, as in the passage of Cicero where he talks of the
little sprat of a boy who slept with his elder sister,[*](pro. Cael. xv. 36. ) or where he speaks of
Flavius, who put out the eyes of crows,[*](pro Mil. xi. 25. Our equivalent is catch a weasel asleep. ) or, again, in the pro Milone, [*](pro Mil. xxii. 60. Rufio, a slave name = red head. ) cries,
Hi, there! Rufio!and talks of
Erucius Antoniaster.[*]( From the lost pro Vareno. Erucius, Antonius' ape. ) On the other hand, this practice becomes more obtrusive when employed in the schools, like the phrase that was so much praised in my boyhood,
Give your father bread,or in the same declamation,
You feed even your dog.[*]( A declamation turning on the law that sons must support their parents. ) But such tricks do not always come off,
especially in
Words are proper, newly-coined or metaphorical. In the case of proper words there is a special dignity conferred by antiquity, since old words, which not everyone would think of using, give our style a venerable and majestic air: this is a form of ornament of which Virgil, with his perfect taste, has made unique use.