[68]
Is not
even the most severe form of irony a kind of jest?
Afer made a witty use of it when he replied to Didius
Callus, who, after making the utmost efforts to secure
a provincial government, complained on receiving
the appointment that he had been forced into accepting, “Well, then, do something for your country's
sake.”1 Cicero also employed metaphor to serve
his jest, when on receiving a report of uncertain
authorship to the effect that Vatinius was dead,
he remarked, “Well, for the meantime I shall
[p. 477]
make use of the interest.”2
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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