Book 9
2.53
Adverbs and pronouns also may be varied, as in the following instance: Ecl. i. 43. Here I beheld that youth For whom each year twelve days my altars smoke, He first gave answer to my aupplication. lic ilium vidi iunvenem followed by bis senos cui nostra dies and hic mihi responsum primus dedit ille petenti. But both these cases involve the massing together of words and phrases either in asyndeton or polysyndeton.
2.54
Writers have given special names to all the different forms, but the names vary with the caprice of the inventor. The origin of these figures is one and the same, namely that they make our utterances more vigorous and emphatic and produce animpression of vehemence such as might spring from repeated outbursts of emotion. Gradation, which the Greeks call climax, necessitates a more obvious and less natural application of art and should therefore be more sparingly employed. Moreover, it involves addition,
2.55
since it repeats what has already been said and, before passing to a new point, dwells on those which precede. I will translate a very famous instance from the Greek. Demosth. de Cor. 179. I did not say this, without making a formal proposal to that effect, I did not make that proposal without undertaking the embassy, nor undertake the embassy without persuading the Thebans.
