Institutio Oratoria

IV. The first method of amplification or attenuation is to be found in the actual word employed to describe a thing. For example, we may say that a man who was beaten was murdered, or that a dishonest fellow is a robber, or, on the other hand, we may say that one who struck another merely touched him, and that one who wounded another merely hurt him. The following passage from the pro Caelio, [*](xvi. 38.) provides examples of both:

If a widow lives freely, if being by nature bold she throws restraint to the winds, makes wealth an excuse for luxury, and strong passions for playing the harlot, would this be a reason for my regarding a man who was somewhat free in his method of saluting her to be an adulterer?

For here he calls an immodest woman a harlot, and says that one who had long been her lover saluted her with a certain freedom. This sort of amplification may be strengthened and made more striking by pointing the comparison between words of stronger meaning and those for which we propose to substitute them, as Cicero does in denouncing Verres [*](Verr. I. iii. 9. ) :

I have brought before you, judges, not a thief, but a plunderer; not an adulterer, but a ravisher; not a mere committer of sacrilege, but the enemy of all religious observance and all holy things; not an assassin,

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but a bloodthirsty butcher who has slain our fellowcitizens and our allies.

In this passage the first epithets are bad enough, but are rendered still worse by those which follow. I consider, However, that there are four principal methods of implication: augmentation, comparison, reasoning and accumulation. Of these, augmentation is most impressive when it ends grandeur even to comparative insignificance. This may be effected either by one step or by everal, and may be carried not merely to the highest degree, but sometimes even beyond it.

A single example from Cicero [*](Verr. v. lxvi. 170. ) will suffice to llustrate all these points.

It is a sin to bind a Roman citizen, a crime to scourge him, little short if the most unnatural murder to put him to death; chat then shall I call his crucifixion?

we should have had several more steps; but after saying that it was

little short of the most unatural murder to put him to death,

What then shall call his crucifixion?

There is a second method of passing beond the highest degree, exemplified in Virgil's description of Lausus: [*](Aen. vii. 649. )

1. Than whom there was not one more fair
2. Saving Laurentian Turnus.

than whom there was not

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one more fair

There is also a third sort, which is not attained by gradation, a height which is not a degree beyond the superlative, but such that nothing greater can be conceived.

You beat your mother. What more need I say? You beat your mother.

It is also possible to heighten our style less obviously, but perhaps yet more effectively, by introducing a continuous and unbroken series in which each word is stronger than the last, as Cicero [*](Phil. I. xxv. 63. ) does when he describes how Antony vomited

before an assembly of the Roman people, while performing a public duty, while Master of the Horse.

Another might have broken up the series and lingered over each step in the ascending scale, but Cicero hastens to his climax and reaches the height not by laborious effort, but by the impetus of his speed. Just as this form of amplification rises to a climax, so, too, the form which depends on comparison seeks to rise from the less to the greater, since by raising what is below it must necessarily exalt that which