Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Another type of reflexion may be produced by the doubling of a phrase, as in the letter written by Seneca for Nero to be sent to the senate on the occasion of his mother's death, with a view to creating the impression that he had been in serious danger:—

As yet I cannot believe or rejoice that I am safe.

Better, however, is the type which relies for its effect on contrast of opposites, as

I know from whom to fly, but whom to follow I know not;

[*]( Cic. ad Att. VIII. vii. 2. ) or,

What of the fact that the poor wretch, though he could not speak, could not keep silence?

[*]( Probably from the lost in Pisonem, since St. Jerome in a letter to Oceanus says postea vero Pisoniano vitio, cum loqui non post, tacere non poterat. But here again the point is obscure. ) But to produce the most striking effect this type should be given point by the introduction of a comparison, such as is made by Trachalus in his speech against Spatale, where he says:

Is it your pleasure, then, ye laws, the faithful guardians of chastity, that wives should receive a title [*]( By the lex Julia et Papia Poppaea childless wives were only entitled to a tenth of their husband's estate. ) and harlots a quarter?

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In these instances, however, the reflexion may equally well be good or bad.

On the other hand, there are some which will always be bad, such as those which turn on play upon words, as in the following case:

Conscript fathers, for I must address you thus that you may remember the duty owed to fathers.

Worse still, as being more unreal and far-fetched, is the remark made by the gladiator mentioned above in his prosecution of his sister:

I have fought to the last finger.

[*]( The exact meaning is uncertain. The allusion may be to the turning up of the thumb as a sign of defeat. See sect. 12. )

There is another similar type, which is perhaps the worst of all, where the play upon words is combined with a false comparison. When I was a young man I heard a distinguished pleader, after handing a mother some splinters of bone taken from the head of her son (which he did merely to provide an occasion for his epigram), cry:

Unhappiest of women, your son is not yet dead and yet you have gathered up his bones!

Moreover, most of our orators delight in devices of the pettiest kind, which seriously considered are merely ludicrous, but at the moment of their production flatter their authors by a superficial semblance of wit. Take, for instance, the exclamation from the scholastic theme, where a man, after being ruined by the barrenness of his land, is shipwrecked and hangs himself:

Let him whom neither earth nor sea receives, hang in mid air.

A similar absurdity is to be found in the declamation, to which I have already referred, in which a father poisons his son who insists on tearing his flesh with his teeth:

The man who eats such flesh, deserves such drink.

Or again, take this passage from the theme of the luxurious man who is alleged to have pretended to starve himself to death:

Tie a noose
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for yourself: you have good reason to be angry with your throat. 'rake poison: it is fit that a luxurious man should die of drink!

Others are merely fatuous, such as the remark of the declaimer who urges the courtiers of Alexander to provide him with a tomb by burning down Babylon.

I am burying Alexander. Shall any man watch such a burial from his housetop?

As if this were the climax of indignities! Others fail from sheer extravagance. For example, I once heard a rhetorician who was declaiming about the Germans, say:

I know not where they carry their heads,

[*]( Is this a suggestion that the Germans are monsters whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders or that they are so tall that their heads are lost in the clouds? ) and again when belauding a hero,

He beats back whole wars with the boss of his shield.

However, I shall never come to an end if I try to describe every possible form of this kind of absurdity. I will therefore turn to discuss a point of more importance. Rhetoricians are divided in opinion on this subject: some devote practically all their efforts to the elaboration of reflexions, while others condemn their employment altogether. I cannot agree entirely with either view.

If they are crowded too thick together, such reflexions merely stand in each other's way, just as in the case of crops and the fruits of trees lack of room to grow results in a stunted development. Again in pictures a definite outline is required to throw objects into relief, and consequently artists who include a number of objects in the same design separate them by intervals sufficient to prevent one casting a shadow on the other. Further,