Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book 8, chapter 3, section 47

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[47] And it is not merely in writing that this may occur, but you will find, unless you exercise the greatest care, that there are a number of persons who take pleasure in putting an indecent interpretation on words, thinking, as Ovid¹ says:

“that whatsoe'er is hid is best of all.
”

Nay, an obscene meaning may be extracted even from words which are as far removed from indecency as possible. Celsus, for example, detects an instance of κακέμφατον in the Virgilian² phrase:

incipiunt agitata tumescere;

but if this point of view be accepted, it will be risky to say anything at all.

1 Met. i. 502.

2 Georg. i. 357.

Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.

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