[30]
but is occasionally employed, For although an orator would
not say “Tydides” or “Pelides,” he will speak of
certain definite persons as “the impious parricides,”
while I should have no hesitation in speaking of
Scipio as “the destroyer of Carthage and Numantia,”
or of Cicero as “the prince of Roman orators.”
Cicero himself, at any rate, availed himself of this
licence, as, for example, in the following case: “Your
faults are not many, said the old praeceptor to the
hero,”1 where neither name is given, though both
are clearly understood.
1 Pro Muren. xxix. 60. The passage continues (a quotation from some old play) “But you have faults and I can correct them.” Phoenix is addressing his pupil Achilles.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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