previous next
[67] Are not a large number of jests made by means of hyperbole? Take for instance Cicero's1 remark about a man who was remarkable for his height, “He bumped his head against the Fabian arch,” or the remark made by Publius Oppius about the family of the Lentuli to the effect, that since the children were always smaller than their parents, the race would “perish by propagation.” Again, what of irony?

1 cp. de Orat II. lxvi. 267, where the jest is attributed to Crassus.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide References (1 total)
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: