[8]
It is also possible to heighten
our style less obviously, but perhaps yet more effectively, by introducing a continuous and unbroken
series in which each word is stronger than the last,
as Cicero1 does when he describes how Antony
vomited “before an assembly of the Roman people,
while performing a public duty, while Master of the
Horse.” Each phrase is more forcible than that
which went before. Vomiting is an ugly thing in
itself, even when there is no assembly to witness
it; it is ugly when there is such an assembly, even
though it be not an assembly of the people; ugly
even though it be an assembly of the people and
not the Roman people; ugly even though he were
engaged on no business at the time, even if his
business were not public business, even if lie were
not Master of the Horse.
1 Phil. I. xxv. 63.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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