Institutio Oratoria

But both the last example and the last but one involve a different figure as well, which, owing to the absence of connecting particles, is called dissolution ( asyndeton ), and is useful when we are speaking with special vigour: for it at once impresses the details on the mind and makes them seem more numerous than they really are. Consequently, we apply this figure not merely to single words, but to whole sentences, as, for instance, is done by Cicero in his reply [*](Only a few fragments remain.) to the speech which Metellus made to the public assembly:

I ordered those against whom information was laid, to be summoned, guarded, brought before the senate: they were led into the senate,

In this figure we may repeat the same connecting particle a number of times, as in the following instance:

1. His house and home and arms
2. And Amyclean hound and Cretan quiver;

Georg. iii. 344.

as in the case of arma virumque followed by multum ille et terris and multa quoque. [*](Aen. i. sqq.)

Adverbs and pronouns also may be varied, as in the following instance: [*](Ecl. i. 43. Here I beheld that youth For whom each year twelve days my altars smoke, He first gave answer to my aupplication. ) lic ilium vidi iunvenem followed by bis senos cui nostra dies and hic mihi responsum primus dedit ille petenti. But both these cases involve the massing together of words and phrases either in asyndeton or polysyndeton.

Writers have given special names to all the different forms, but the names vary with the caprice of the inventor. The origin of these figures is one and the same, namely that they make our utterances more vigorous and emphatic and produce animpression of vehemence such as might spring from repeated outbursts of emotion. Gradation, which the Greeks call climax, necessitates a more obvious and less natural application of art and should therefore be more sparingly employed. Moreover, it involves addition,

since it repeats what has already been said and, before passing to a new point, dwells on those which precede. I will translate a very famous instance from the Greek. [*]( Demosth. de Cor. 179. )

I did not say this, without making a formal proposal to that effect, I did not make that proposal without undertaking the embassy, nor undertake the embassy without persuading the Thebans.

There are, however, examples of the same thing in Latin authors.

It was the energy of Africanus that gave him his peculiar excellence, his excellence that gave him glory, his glory that gave him rivals.

Consequently this means the abolition

v7-9 p.479

of trials for treason no less than for extortion, for offences covered by the Plautian law no less than for treason, for bribery no less than for those offences, and for all breaches of every law no less than for bribery,