Kitap 8
3.63
But since different views have been held with regard to this art of representation, I shall not attempt to divide it into all its different departments, whose number is ostentatiously multiplied by certain writers, but shall content myself with touching on those which appear to me to be absolutely necessary. There is, then, to begin with, one form of vividness which consists in giving an actual word-picture of a scene, as in the passage beginning, Forthwith each hero tiptoe stood erect. Aen. v. 426. Other details follow which give us such a picture of the two boxers confronting each other for the fight, that it could not have been clearer had we been actual spectators.
3.64
Cicero is supreme in this department, as in others. Is there anybody so incapable of forming a mental picture of a scene that, when he reads the following passage from the Verrines, v. xxxiii. 86. he does not seem not merely to see the actors in the scene, the place itself and their very dress, but even to imagine to himself other details that the orator does not describe? There on the shore stood the praetor, the representative of the Roman people, with slippered feet, robed in a purple cloak, a tunic streaming to his heels, and leaning on the arm of this worthless woman.
3.65
For my own part, I seem to see before my eyes his face, his eyes, the unseemly blandishments of himself and his paramour, the silent loathing and frightened shame of those who viewed the scene.
