Institutio Oratoria

Therefore we must not expect any speech to be ornate that is not, in the first place,

He desires, therefore, that our words should have a certain weight about them, and that our thoughts should be of a serious cast or, at any rate, adapted to the opinions and character of mankind. These points once secured, we may proceed to employ those expressions which he regards as conferring distinction on style, that is to say, specially selected words and phrases, metaphor, hyperbole, appropriate epithets, repetitions, synonyms and all such language as may suit our case and provide an adequate representation of the facts.

But since my first task is to point out the faults to be avoided, I will begin by calling attention to the fault known as κακέμφατον, a term applied to the employment of language to which perverted usage has given an obscene meaning: take, for example, phrases such as ductare exercitus and patrare bellum, [*](ductare might mean ad libidinem abducere. patrare bellum might mean paedicare formosum. ) which were employed by Sallust in their old and irreproachable sense, but, I regret to say, cause amusement in certain quarters to-day. This, however, is not, in my opinion, the fault of the writer, but of his readers;

still it is one to be avoided, for we have perverted the purity of language by our own corruption, and there is no course left to us but to give ground before the victorious advance of vice. The same term is also applied in the cases where an unfortunate collocation of words produces an obscene suggestion. For example, in the phrase cum hominibus notis loqui, unless hominibus is placed between cum and notis, we shall commit ourselves to a phrase