[60]
Some
of these jests turn on similarity of meaning. Of
this kind was the witticism uttered by Vatinius when
he was prosecuted by Calvus. Vatinius was wiping
his forehead with a white handkerchief, and his
accuser called attention to the unseemliness of the
act. Whereupon Vatinius replied, “Though I am
on my trial, I go on eating white bread all the
same.”1
1 The accused habitually wore mourning. Calvus suggested that Vatinius should not therefore have a white handkerchief. Vatinius retorts, You might as well say that I ought to have dropped eating white bread.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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