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[41]
Nor is it only past or present actions
which we may imagine: we may equally well present
a picture of what is likely to happen or might have
happened. This is done with extraordinary skill by
Cicero in his defence of Milo,1 where he shows
what Clodius would have done, had he succeeded
in securing the praetorship. But this transference
of time, which is technically called μετάστασις was
more modestly used in vivid description by the old
orators. For they would preface it by words such
as “Imagine that you see”: take, for example,
the words of Cicero2: “Though you cannot see this
with your bodily eyes, you can see it with the mind's
eye.”
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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