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[54] Cicero passed a witty comment on a fault of this kind in a declamation of Hirtius when he said that a child had been carried for ten months in his mother's womb. “Oh,” he said, “I suppose other women carry them in their bags.”1 Sometimes, however, the form of pleonasm, of which I have just given an example, may have a pleasing effect when employed for the sake of emphasis, as in the Virgilian phrase2:
“With mine own ears his voice I heard.
But whenever the addition is not deliberate,

1 perulra means “a small wallet.” But it is noteworthy that in Apul. Met. V. xiv. it is used = uterus, and the doubleentendre was probably current in Cicero's time.

2 Aen. iv- 359.

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