Institutio Oratoria

1. Thence like fierce wolves beneath the cloud of night,

Aen. ii. 355.

precedes its subject. On the other hand, an example of the simile following its subject is to be found in the first Georgic, where, after the long lamentation over the wars civil and foreign that have afflicted Rome, there come the lines:

1. As when, their barriers down, the chariots speed
2. Lap after lap; in vain the charioteer
3. Tightens the curb: his steeds ungovernable
4. Sweep him away nor heeds the car the rein.

Georg. i. 512.

There is, however, no antapodosis in these similes.

Such reciprocal representation places both subjects of comparison before our very eyes, displaying them side by side. Virgil provides many remarkable examples, but it will be better for me to quote from oratory. In the pro Murena Cicero [*](Pro Mur. xiii. 29. ) says,

As among Greek musicians (for so they say), only those turn flute-players that cannot play the lyre, so here at Rome we see that those who cannot acquire the art of oratory betake themselves to the study of the

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law.

There is also another simile in the same speech, [*](Pro Mur. xvii. 36. ) which is almost worthy of a poet, but in virtue of its reciprocal representation is better adapted for ornament:

For as tempests are generally preceded by some premonitory signs in the heaven, but often, on the other hand, break forth for some obscure reason without any warning whatsoever, so in the tempests which sway the people at our Roman elections we are not seldom in a position to discern their origin, and yet, on the other hand, it is frequently so obscure that the storm seems to have burst without any apparent cause.

We find also shorter similes, such as

Wandering like wild beasts through the woods,

or the passage from Cicero's speech against Clodius: [*](Now lost.)

He fled from the court like a man escaping naked from a fire.

Similar examples from everyday speech will occur to everyone. Such comparisons reveal the gift not merely of placing a thing vividly before the eye, but of doing so with rapidity and without waste of detail.