[13]
These may have been figures when Sallust made
them; but it is a question whether they can now be
so considered, since they have met with such general
acceptance. For we are in the habit of accepting
common parlance as sufficient authority where current
phrases are concerned: for example, rebus agentibus
in the sense of while this was going on, which
Pollio rebukes Labienus1 for using, has become an
accredited idiom, as has contumeliam fecit, which, as is
[p. 451]
well known, is stigmatised by Cicero2: for in his day
they said ad fici contumelia.
1 See IV. i. 11; I. V. 8.
2 Phil. III. ix. 22. Quintilian appears primafacie to regard the phrase as meaning “to suffer insult.” But in Plautus and Terence it means to “inflict an insult,” and Quintilian probably quotes the phrase in this sense. He should, however, have said adficere, not adfici, to make his meaning clear.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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