Kitap 8
3.20
On the other hand, there are some which will always be bad, such as those which turn on play upon words, as in the following case: Conscript fathers, for I must address you thus that you may remember the duty owed to fathers. Worse still, as being more unreal and far-fetched, is the remark made by the gladiator mentioned above in his prosecution of his sister: I have fought to the last finger. The exact meaning is uncertain. The allusion may be to the turning up of the thumb as a sign of defeat. See sect. 12.
3.21
There is another similar type, which is perhaps the worst of all, where the play upon words is combined with a false comparison. When I was a young man I heard a distinguished pleader, after handing a mother some splinters of bone taken from the head of her son (which he did merely to provide an occasion for his epigram), cry: Unhappiest of women, your son is not yet dead and yet you have gathered up his bones!
3.22
Moreover, most of our orators delight in devices of the pettiest kind, which seriously considered are merely ludicrous, but at the moment of their production flatter their authors by a superficial semblance of wit. Take, for instance, the exclamation from the scholastic theme, where a man, after being ruined by the barrenness of his land, is shipwrecked and hangs himself: Let him whom neither earth nor sea receives, hang in mid air.
