Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

But these devices are so common that they can scarcely lay claim to involve the art essential to figures. On the other hand it is quite obviously figure, when two different constructions are combined as in the following case:

  1. Sociis tunc arma capessant
  2. Edico et dira bellum cum gene gerendumn.
Aen. iii. 234; participio = gerundive ( gerendum ).
(I bid my comrades straight to seize their arms And war be waged against a savage race.) For although the portion of the sentence following bellum ends with a participle, both clauses of the sentence are correctly governed by edico. Another form of connexion, which does not necessarily involve omission, is called συνοικείωσις, because it connects two different things, for example:
  1. The miser lacks
  2. That which he has no less than what he has not.
Syrus 486 (Ribbeck).

To this figure is opposed distinction, which they call παραδιαστολή, by which we distinguish between similar things, as in this sentence: [*](Rutil. i. 4. )

When you call yourself wise instead of astute, brave instead of rash, economical instead of mean.
But this is entirely dependent on definition, and therefore I have my doubts whether it can be called a figure. Its opposite occurs when we pass at a bound from one thing to something different, as though from like to like; for example:
  1. I labour to be brief, I turn obscure,
Hor A.P. 25.
with what follows.
v7-9 p.485

There is a third class of figures which attracts the ear of the audience and excites their attention by some resemblance, equality or contrast of words. To this class belongs paronomasia, which we call adnominatio. This may be effected in different ways. It may depend on the resemblance of one word to another which has preceded, although the words are in different cases. Take the following passage from Domitius Afer's defence of Cloatilla: Mulier omnium rerum imiperita, in omnnibus rebus infelix. [*](A woman unskilled in everything and in everything unhappy.)

Or the same word may be repeated with greater meaning, as quando homo, hostis homno. [*]( The meaning is obscure. As punctuated, the sense is since he is a man, the man is an enemy, i. e. the utterance of some misanthrope. Or a question-mark may be placed after homo and the meaning will be since he is a man, can he be an enemy? ) But although I have used these examples to illustrate something quite different, one of them involves both emphasis and reiteration. The opposite of parononasia occurs when one word is proved to be false by repetition; for instance,

This law did not seem to be a law to private individuals.
[*](In Pis. xiii. 20. ) Akin to this is that syled ἀντανάκλασις,

where the same word is used in two different meanings. When Proculeius reproached his son with waiting for his death, and the son replied that he was not waiting for it, the former retorted, Well then, I ask you to wait for it. Sometimes such difference in meaning is obtained not by using the same word, but one like it, as for example by saying that a man whom you think dignus supplicatione (worthy of supplication) is supplicio adficiendus. [*]( In old Latin supplicium was used as equivalent to suppliratio, and this use survives in Livy and Sallust. But in Augustan and post-Augustan language the normal meaning of supplicium was punishment, and the natural translation would be worthy of punishment. )

There are also other ways in which the same words may be used in different senses or altered by the lengthening or shortening of

v7-9 p.487
a syllable: this is a poor trick even when employed in jest, and I am surprised that it should be included in the text-books: the instances which I quote are therefore given as examples for avoidance, not for imitation. Here they are:

Amari iucundum est, si curetur ne quid insit amari,[*]( Auct. ad Herenn. iv. 14: It is pleasant to be loved, but we must take care that there is no bitterness in that love. ) and Avium dulcedo ad avium ducit; [*](Birds' sweet song leads us into pathless places.) and again this jest from Ovid, [*]( Probably from a collection of epigrams: Furia, why should I not call you a fury? )

  1. Cur ego non dicam, Furia, te furiam?
Cornificius calls this traductio,