Kitap 9
2.32
For my own part, I have included both under the same generally accepted term, since we cannot imagine a speech without we also imagine a person to utter it. But when we lend a voice to things to which nature has denied it, we may soften down the figure in the way illustrated by the following passage: For if my country, which is far dearer to me than life itself, if all Italy, if the whole commonwealth were to address me thus, 'Marcus Tullius, what dost thou? in Cat. T. xi. 27. A bolder figure of the same kind may be illustrated by the following: Your country, Catiline, pleads with you thus, and though she utters never a word, cries to you, 'For not a few years past no crime has come to pass save through your doing!' in Cat. I. vii. 18.
2.33
It is also convenient at times to pretend that we have before our eyes the images of things, persons or utterances, or to marvel that the same is not the case with our adversaries or the judges; it is with this design that we use phrases such as It seems to me, or Does it not seem to you? But such devices make a great demand on our powers of eloquence. For with things which are false and incredible by nature there are but two alternatives: either they will move our hearers with exceptional force because they are beyond the truth, or they will be regarded as empty nothings because they are not the truth.
