Kitap 8
3.6
There is a second method of passing beond the highest degree, exemplified in Virgil's description of Lausus: Aen. vii. 649. Than whom there was not one more fair Saving Laurentian Turnus. or here the words than whom there was not one more fair give us the superlative, on which the poet proceeds to superimpose a still higher degree.
3.7
There is also a third sort, which is not attained by gradation, a height which is not a degree beyond the superlative, but such that nothing greater can be conceived. You beat your mother. What more need I say? You beat your mother. For to make a thing so great as to be incapable of augmentation is in itself a kind of augmentation.
3.8
It is also possible to heighten our style less obviously, but perhaps yet more effectively, by introducing a continuous and unbroken series in which each word is stronger than the last, as Cicero Phil. I. xxv. 63. does when he describes how Antony vomited before an assembly of the Roman people, while performing a public duty, while Master of the Horse. Each phrase is more forcible than that which went before. Vomiting is an ugly thing in itself, even when there is no assembly to witness it; it is ugly when there is such an assembly, even though it be not an assembly of the people; ugly even though it be an assembly of the people and not the Roman people; ugly even though he were engaged on no business at the time, even if his business were not public business, even if lie were not Master of the Horse.
