Institutio Oratoria

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

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.

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.

For what I have now to demonstrate is that when amplification is our purpose we

Did that illustrious citizen, the pontifex maximus, Publius Scipio, acting merely in his private capacity, kill Tiberius Gracchus when he introduced but slight changes for the worse that did not seriously impair the constitution of the state, and shall we as consuls suffer Catiline to live, whose aim was to lay waste the whole world with fire and sword?

Here Catiline is compared to Gracchus, the constitution of the state to the whole world, a slight change for the worse to fire and sword and desolation, and a private citizen to the consuls, all comparisons affording ample opportunity for further individual expansion, if anyone should desire so to do.

With regard to the amplificalion produced by reasoning, we must consider whether reasoning quite expresses my meaning. I am not a stickler for exact terminology, provided the sense is clear to any serious student. My motive in using this term was, however, this, that this form of amplification produces its effect at a point other than that where it is actually introduced. One thing is magnified in order to effect a corresponding augmentation elsewhere, and it is by reasoning that our hearers are then led on from the first point to the second which we desire to emplasise.

Cicero, when he is about to reproach Antony with his drunkenness and vomiting, says, [*](Cat. i. i. 3. Phil. ii. xxv. 63. )

You with such a throat, such flanks, such burly strength in every limb of your prize-fighter's body,

amplification results from subsequent events, since the violence with which the wine burst from him was such that the vomiting was not accidental nor voluntary, but a matter of necessity, at a moment when it was specially unseemly, while the food was not recently swallowed, as is sometimes the case, but the residue of the revel of the preceding day.

On the other hand, amplification may equally result from antecedent circumstances; for example, when Juno made her request to Aeolus, the latter [*](Aen. i. 81. )

1. "Turned his spear and smote
2. The mountain's caverned side, and forth the winds
3. Rushed in a throng,"

Again, when we have depicted some horrible circumstance in such colours as to raise the detestation of our audience to its height, we then proceed to make light of them in order that what is to follow may seem still more horrible: consider the following passage from Cicero: [*](Verr. 5, 44, 177. )

These are but trivial offences for so great a criminal. The captain of a warship from a famous city bought off' his threatened scourging for a price: a humane concession! Another paid down a sum of money to save his head from the axe: a perfectly ordinary circumstance!

There is a similar form of amplification which is effected by reference to something which appears to have been said with quite another purpose in view. The chiefs of Troy [*](Il. iii. 156. ) think it no discredit that Trojan and Greek should endure so many woes for so many years all for the sake of Helen's beauty. How wondrous, then, must her beauty have been! For it is not Paris, her ravisher, that says this; it is not some youth or one of the common herd; no, it is the elders, the wisest of their folk, the counsellors of Priam.

Nay, even the king himself, worn out by a ten years' war, which had cost him the loss of so many of his sons, and threatened to lay his kingdom in the dust, the man who, above all, should have loathed and detested her beauty, the source of all those tears, hears these words, calls her his daughter, and places her by his side, excuses her guilt, and denies that she is the cause of his sorrows.

Again, when Plato in the Symposium [*](218B–219D.) makes Alcibiades confess how he had wished Socrates to treat him, he does not, I think, record these facts with a view to blaming Aleibiades, but rather to show the unconquerable self-control of Socrates, which would not yield even to the charms which the greatest beauty of his day so frankly placed at his disposal.

We are even given the means of realising the extraordinary stature of the heroes of old by the description of their weapons, such as the shield of Ajax [*](Il. vii. 219. ) and the spear-shaft of Achilles [*](Il. xvi. 140. ) hewn in the forests of Pelion. Virgil [*]( Aen. iii. 659. ) also has made admirable use of this device in his description of the Cyclops. For what an image it gives us of the bulk of that body

1. Whose hand was propped by a branchless trunk of pine.

Whose

1. corselet manifold
2. Scarce two men on their shoulders could uphold

1. Drave the scattering Trojans at full speed.

You might see beds in the chambers of his slaves strewn with the purple coverlets that had once been Pompey's own.

This form of amplification is near akin to emphasis: but emphasis derives its effect from the actual words, while in this case the effect is produced by inference from the facts, and is consequently far more impressive, inasmuch as facts are more impressive than words.

What was that sword of yours doing, Tubero, the sword you drew on the field of Pharsalus? Against whose body did you aim its point? What meant those arms you bore? Whither were your thoughts, your eyes, your hand, your fiery courage directed on that day? What passion, what desires were yours?

There stood the porter of the prison, the praetor's executioner, the death and terror of the citizens and allies of Rome, the lictor Sextius.

Attenuation is effected by the same method, since there are as many degrees of descent as ascent. I shall therefore content myself with quoting but one example, namely, the words used by Cicero [*](Leg. Agr. II. V. 13. ) to describe the speech of Rullus:

A few, however, who stood nearest to him suspected that he had intended to say something about the agrarian law.

I know that some may perhaps regard hyperbole as a species of amplification, since hyperbole can be