Book 7
9.8
The controversial theme, A certain man in his will ordered his heirs to erect statuam auream hastam tenentem,' turns on a similar ambiguity; for it raises the question whether it is the statue holding the spear which is to be of gold, or whether the spear should be of gold and the statue of some other material. The same result is even more frequently produced by a mistaken inflexion of the voice, as in the line: quinquaginta uhi erant centum inde occidit Achilles. Achilles slew fifty out of a hundred, or a hundred out of fifty. Translated from a Greek line in Arist. Soph. El. i. 4. ( πεντήκοντ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ἑκατὸν λίπε δῖος ). Quinquaginta is the object of occidit. Faulty reading might make it go with ubi erant, leaving centum as the object of occidit, and making nonsense of the line.
9.9
It is also often doubtful to which of two antecedents a phrase is to be referred. Hence we get such controversial themes as, My heir shall be bound to give my wife a hundred pounds of silver according to choice, where it is left uncertain which of the two is to make the choice. But in these examples of ambiguity, the first may be remedied by a change of case, the second by separating 1 the words or altering their position, the third by some addition. See § 11.
