Book 9
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Or speech may be inserted without any mention of the speaker, as in the line: Aen. ii. 29. The words represent what some Trojan said after the departure of the Greeks. Here the Dolopian host Camped, here the fierce Achilles pitched his tent. This involves a mixture of figures, since to impersonalion we add the figure known as ellipse, which in this case consists in the omission of any indication as to who is speaking. At times impersonation takes the form of narrative. Thus we find indirect speeches in the historians, as at the opening of Livy's first book i. 9. These words represent the argument of envoys sent out by Romulus to neighbouring cities. : That cities, like other things, spring from the humblest origins, and that those who are helped by their own valour and the favour of heaven subsequently win great power and a great name for themselves. Apostrophe also,
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which consists in the diversion of our address from the judge, is wonderfully stirring, whether we attack our adversary as in the passage, What was that sword of yours doing, Tubero, in the field of Pharsalus? pro Lig. iii. 9. or turn to make some invocation such as, For I appeal to you, hills and groves of Alba, pro Mil. xxxi. 85. or to entreaty that will bring odium on our opponents, as in the cry, O Porcian and Sempronian laws. Verr. V. lxiii. 163. Laws protecting the person of a Roman citizen, and disregarded by Verres.
