Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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,

and mentioning the worst of crimes, he adds,

What then shall call his crucifixion?

Consequently, since he had ready exhausted his vocabulary of crime, words must necessarily fail him to describe something still orse.

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

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

or here the words

than whom there was not
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one more fair

give us the superlative, on which the poet proceeds to superimpose a still higher degree.

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.

For to make a thing so great as to be incapable of augmentation is in itself a kind of augmentation.

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.

Each phrase is more forcible than that which went before. Vomiting is an ugly thing in itself, even when there is no assembly to witness it; it is ugly when there is such an assembly, even though it be not an assembly of the people; ugly even though it be an assembly of the people and not the Roman people; ugly even though he were engaged on no business at the time, even if his business were not public business, even if lie were not 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

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is above, as, for example: in the following passage: [*](Phil. II. xxv. 63. )

If this had befallen you at the dinner-table in the midst of your amazing potations, who would not have thought it unseemly? But it occurred at an assembly of the Roman people.

Or take this passage from the speech against Catiline: [*](Phil. I. vii. 17. xi 32. )

In truth, if my slaves feared me as all your fellowcitizens fear you, I should think it wise to leave my house.

At times, again, we may advance a parallel to make something which we desire to exaggerate seem greater than ever, as Cicero does in the pro Cluentio, [*](cp. v. xiii. 24. ) where, after telling a story of a woman of Miletus who took a bribe from the reversionary heirs to prevent the birth of her expected child, lie cries,

How much greater is the punishment deserved by Oppianicus for the same offence! For that woman, by doing violence to her own body did but torture herself, whereas he procured the same result by applying violence and torture to the body of another.

I would not, however, have anyone think that this method is identical with that used in argument, where the greater is inferred from the less, although there is a certain resemblance between the two. For in the latter case we are aiming at proof, in the former at amplification; for example, in the passage just cited about Oppianicus, the object of the comparison is not to show that his action was a crime, but that it was even worse than another crime. There is, however, a certain affinity between the two methods, and I will therefore repeata passage which I quoted there, although my present purpose is different.