say what is more than the truth, as, Vomiting, he filled his lap and the whole tribunal with fragments of undigested food;* and, Two rocks rise threateningly towards the sky; or we exaggerate one thing by reference to another; as, Cycladas,+ Credas innare revulsas You would have thought the Cyclades uptorn 69. or by comparison; as, Fulminis ocior alis,§ Swifter than the wings Of lightning; or by something of a characteristic nature : Illa vel intacta segetis per summa volaret "would fly." 70. or by a metaphor, as in the word volaret, Sometimes, too, one hyperbole is increased by the addition of another, as Cicero, in speaking against Antony, says, What Charybdis was ever so voracious? what Charybdis, do I say? If such a monster ever existed, it was but one animal, but the whole ocean, by Hercules, would scarcely have been able, as it seems to me, to have swallowed up so many things, so widely dispersed, and lying in places so distant, in so short a space of time! 71 But I have noticed, as I think, an exquisite figure of this kind in Pindar, the prince of lyric poets, in the book which he has called "Tuvo: for he says, that the impetuosity. of Hercules in attacking the Meropes, who are said to have dwelt in the island of Cos, was comparable neither to fire, nor wind, nor the sea, but to lightning, as if other objects were * Cicero Philipp. ii. 25. En. viii. 691. En. vii, 808. + En. i. 162. insufficient, and lightning only suitable, to give a notion of his rapidity. 72 This Cicerot may be thought to have imitated, when he said of Verres, There arose in Sicily, after a long interval of time, not a Dionysius, nor a Phalaris, (for that island, in days of old, produced many cruel tyrants,) but a monster of a new kind, though endued with that ferocity which is said to have prevailed in those parts; since I believe that no Charybdis or Scylla was ever so destructive to ships in those seas as he was. 73. There are also as many modes of extenuating as of magnifying: Virgil says of a flock of lean sheep, Vix ossibus hærent,‡ They scarcely hang together by their bones. Or, as Cicero says, in a book of jests, Fundum Varro vocat, quem possim mittere fundâ, But even in the use of the hyperbole some moderation must This work of Pindar is lost. Burmann observes that there are allusions to this expedition of Hercules, Nem. iv. 41, and Isthm. vi. 46. + In Verr. v. 56. Virg. Ecl. iii. 103. § It is useless to try to translate this epigram, or render it intelligible to any one who does not understand the Latin language. Whether the word Varro has any right to a place in it, is very doubtful, for it appears to have been inserted by Aldus Manutius merely on conjecture; some manuscripts have veto, others vecto, others vero. Spalding would read Fundum, Vecte, vocas, &c., and supposes that the epigram was made on some fellow who was boasting of his lands, which Cicero ridicules as being so small that they might be put nto a sling, and might even fall out of it before they could be properly lischarged from it. For Cicero in quodam joculari libello, with which the epigram is prefaced, Spalding would read Cicero est in quodam joculatus letto. 7 believed. It very often raises a laugh; and if the laugh bo on the side of the speaker, the hyperbole gains the praise of wit, but, if otherwise, the stigma of folly. 75. It is in commou use, as much among the unlearned as among the learned; because there is in all men a natural propensity to magnify or extenuate what comes before them, and no one is contented with the exact truth. But such departure from the truth is pardoned, because we do not affirm what is false. 76. In a word, the hyperbole is a beauty, when the thing itself, of which we have to speak, is in its nature extraordinary; for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth, because the exact truth cannot be said; and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it. But on this head I have here said enough, because I have spoken on it more fully in the book in which I have set forth the Causes of the Corruption of Eloquence. BOOK IX. CHAPTER I. Of figures; often confounded with tropes, § 1-3. Difference between them, 4-6. Name not of great importance, 7-9. The word Figure is taken by some in a more extended, by others in a more confined, sense, 10-14. Two kinds of figures, those of thought and those of words, 15-18. Of figures of thought, 19-21 Some make them too numerous, 22-24. Quotation from Cicero de Oratore, 26-36. Another from Cicero's Orator, 37-45. 1. As I have treated, in the preceding book, concerning tropes, there now follows that part of my work which relates to figures, (they are in Greek called oxhuara,) and which is by the nature of the subject connected with what goes before for many have considered that figures are tropes; because, whether tropes take their name from being formed in a particular way, or from making changes in language, (whence they are also called motus,*) it must be acknowledged that both those peculiarities are found equally in figures. 2. The use of them is also the same; for they add force to our thoughts, and confer a grace upon them. Nor have authors been wanting to give tropes the name of figures, among whom is Caius Artorius Proculus.+ 3. The resemblance between them is indeed so striking, that it is not easy for every one to tell the difference; for though some species of both are evidently distinct, (even while there still remains a general similarity in their nature, inasmuch as they both deviate from simple and direct language for the purpose of adding to the beauties of style,) yet others are divided by a very narrow boundary, as irony, for example, which is numbered as well among figures of thought as among tropes ; while as to periphrasis, and hyperbaton, and onomatopeia, even eminent authors have called them figures of speech rather than tropes. 4. The difference between them, therefore, requires the * See viii. 5, 35. † Of this writer, supposing the name to be correct, the learned know nothing, unless he be the Artorius mentioned by Festus under the words procestria, tentipellium, topper, to whom Burmann aptly refers us. Spalding. * V. 10, 44. 1 ་ CH.I.1 EDUCATION OF AN ORATUR. 145 more carefully to be specified. A TROPE, then, is an expression turned from its natural and principal signification to another, for the purpose of adorning style; or, as most of the grammarians define it, an expression altered from the sense in which it is proper to one in which it is not proper. A FIGURE (as is indicated by its very name) is a form of speech differing from the common and ordinary mode of expression. 5. In tropes, accordingly, some words are substituted for others, as in metaphor, metonymy, antonomasia, metalepsis, synecdoche, catachresis, allegory, and, generally, in hyperbole, which has place, however, both in matter and in words. Onomatopeia is the coining of a word, which word is then put for some other word or words which we should have used if we had not coined it. 6. Periphrasis, though it commonly fills up the place of the term instead of which it is used, employs several words for one. The ἐπίθετον, inasmuch as it generally partakes of the antonomasia, becomes, by union with it, a trope. In the hyperbaton there is a change of order, and many, therefore, exclude that kind of figure from among tropes; it transfers, however, a word, or part of a word,† from its own place to another. 7. Nothing of this sort is necessary to figures; for a figure may consist of natural words arranged in their common order. As to irony, how it comes to be sometimes a trope, and sometimes a figure, I shall explain in the proper place; for I allow that the two appellations are applied to it indifferently, and I am aware what complicated and subtle disputations the question about the name has originated; but they have no relation to my present object; and it is of no importance how a trope or a figure is termed, provided it be understood of what use it is in style. 8. The nature of things is not changed by a change in their appellations; and as men, if they take a name different from that which they had, are still the same persons, so the forms of expression, of which we are speaking, whether they be called tropes or figures, are still of the same efficacy, for their use does not consist in their name but in their influence; just as in regard to the state of a cause, it is of no consequence We speak in a trope, and adopt the antonomasia, when we use Pelides, for example, by itself, for Achilles. If we use the two in conjunction, Achilles Pelides, "Achilles, son of Peleus," Pelides is but an epitheton. See viii. 6, 29; vi. 3, 69. † As in the verse of Virgil cited viii. 6, 66, C. 2, sect. 44. L |