Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

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

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the schools, and often turn the laugh against the speaker, particularly in the present day, when declamation has become so far removed from reality and labours under such an extravagant fastidiousness in the choice of words that it has excluded a good half of the language from its vocabulary.

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.

For his employment of words such as olli, [*]( Archaic for illi. ) quianam, [*](Because.) moerus, [*]( Archaic for murus (Aen. x. 24.). ) pone [*](Behind.) and pellacia [*]( Deceitfulness ( Aen. ii. 90). ) gives his work that impressive air of antiquity which is so attractive in pictures, but which no art of man can counterfeit. But we must not overdo it, and such words must not be dragged out from the deepest darkness of the past. Quaeso is old enough: what need for us to say quaiso? [*](quaeso = pray, oppido quite, exactly. ) Oppido was still used by my older contemporaries, but I fear that no one would tolerate it now. At any rate, antegerio, [*](Quite, very.) which means the same, would certainly never be used by anyone who was not possessed with a passion for notoriety.

What need have we of acrumnosum? [*](Wretched.) It is surely enough to call a thing horridum. Reor may be tolerated, autumo [*](Assert.) smacks of tragedy, proles [*](Offspring.) has become a rarity, while prosapia [*](Stock, family.) stamps the man who uses it as lacking taste. Need I say more Almost the whole language has changed.

But there are still some old words that are endeared to us by

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their antique sheen, while there are others that we cannot avoid using occasionally, such, for example, as nuncupare and fari: [*](Name, speak.) there are yet others which it requires some daring to use, but which may still be employed so long as we avoid all appearance of that affectation which Virgil [*](Catal. ii. ) has derided so cleverly:
  1. Britain's Thucydides, whose mad Attic brain
  2. Loved word-amalgams like Corinthian bronze,
  3. First made a horrid blend of words from Gaul,
  4. Tau, al, min, sil and God knows how much else,
  5. Then mixed them in a potion for his brother!
This was a certain Cimber who killed his brother,

a fact which Cicero recorded in the words,

Cimber has killed his brother German.
[*](Phil. XI. vi. 14. A pun on the two meanings of gemanus, brother and German. ) The epigram against Sallust is scarcely less well known:
  1. Crispus, you, too, Jugurtha's fall who told,
  2. And filched such store of words from Cato old.

It is a tiresome kind of affectation; any one can practise it, and it is made all the worse by the fact that the man who catches the infection will not choose his words to suit his facts, but will drag in irrelevant facts to provide an opportunity for the use of such words. The coining of new words is, as I stated in the first book, [*](I. v. 70) more permissible in Greek, for the Greeks did not hesitate to coin nouns to represent certain sounds and emotions, and in truth they were taking no greater liberty than was taken by the first men when they gave names to things.