Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

which must be considered in connexion with words taken both singly and in conjunction. Words taken singly are known as asyndeta (unconnected). In dealing with them we must take care that our style does not diminish in force through the fact that a weaker word is made to follow a stronger: as, for example, if after calling a man a despoiler of temples we were to speak of him as a thief, or after styling him a highwayman were to dub him an insolent fellow. For sentences should rise and grow in force: of this an excellent example is provided by Cicero, [*](Phil. II. xxv. 63. ) where he says,

You, with that throat, those lungs, that strength, that would do credit to a prizefighter, in every limb of your body

; for there each phrase is followed by one stronger than the last, whereas, if he had begun by referring to his whole body, he could scarcely have gone on to speak of his lungs and throat without an anticlimax. There is also another species of order which may be entitled natural, as for example when we speak of

men and women,

day and night,

rising and setting,

in preference to the reverse order.

In some cases a change in the order will make a word superfluous: for example, we write fratres gemini rather than gemini fratres (twin-brothers), since if gemini came first, there would be no necessity to add fratres. The rule which some have sought to enforce that nouns should precede verbs, and verbs adverbs, while epithets and pronouns should follow their substantives, is a mere extravagance, since the reverse order is often adopted with excellent effect.