Kitap 6
3.55
Similar jests may be produced by the addition or removal of the aspirate, or by splitting up a word or joining it to another: the effect is generally poor, but the practice is occasionally permissible. Jests drawn from names are of the same type. Cicero introduces a number of such jests against Verres, but always as quotations from others. On one occasion he says that he would sweep verres is also the second pers. sing. of the future of verro. everything away, for his name was Verres; on another, that he had given more trouble to Hercules, whose temple he had pillaged, than was given by the Erymanthine boar ; on another, that he was a bad priest who had left so worthless a pig behind him. verres means a boar and hero suggests a pig that should have been killed as a victim. For these jests see Verr. II. xxi. 62, IV. xliii. 95, I. xlvi. 121 respectively. Compare also IV. xxiv. 53 and xxv. 57. For Verres' predecessor was named Sacerdos.
3.56
Sometimes, however, a lucky chance may give us an opportunity of employing such jests with effect, as for instance when Cicero in the pro Caecina x. 27. The reference must be to the make-up of Phormio on the stage: there is nothing in the play to suggest the epithet black. says of the witness Sextus Clodius Phormio, He was not less black or less bold than the Phormio of Terence.
