Author: George Lincoln Hendrickson

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-07-18

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 9780282376383

Excerpt from The Commentariolum Petitionis Attributed to Quintus Cicero, Vol. 6: Authenticity, Rhetorical Form, Style, Text It is perhaps worth noting, but scarcely of any significance for our question, that these four passages of most striking resemblance between the Commentariolum and the oration in Toga Candida occur in the same sequence in both works. Concerning this last example a significant point has been overlooked. In the first place the antithesis of uno sufl'ragio with duas sicas destringere falls out of the figure in puerile fashion, which is not the case with Marcus's very natural phrase duas uno tem pore sicas destringere. But furthermore - and this to my thinking is a decisive consideration - the essential antithesis in the oration is not between duas stoas and uno tempore, but between the Spanish stiletto (hispaniensi pugiunculo),3 which had failed to cut the sinews of the state, and the two daggers (sicas) which the same citizens were now attempting to draw. In the Commentariolum the metaphor is launched abruptly, in trivial antithesis to uno sufi'ragio, with rather frigid effect; in the frag ment of the in Toga Candida the whole phrase duas in rem publicam sicas distringere is the natural outgrowth of and antithesis to the preceding metaphor Hispaniensi pugiunculo nervos incidere. That is, once given this metaphor, the second is an 'out growth of the historical relationships, and not a random shot of rhetorical pyrotechnics as in the Commentariolum. But it will hardly be questioned, I imagine, that looked at per se, the place where the metaphor is most natural and in most organic relation to the context is most likely to be the original place of its occurrence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.