for “myself” is already implied by “I saw.” But when such language is over weighted by some purely superfluous addition, it is, as I have also pointed out elsewhere,2 a fault; whereas when, as in this case, it serves to make the sense stronger and more obvious, it is a merit. “I saw,” “myself,” “before my very eyes,” are so many appeals to the emotion.Myself before my very eyes I saw:
Aen. xii. 638.
[46]
Or take this example from another book of the
orations against Catiline, “He departed, he went
[p. 473]
hence; he burst forth, he was gone.”1 This is regarded as a case of pleonasm by Caecilius, that is to
say, as language fuller than is absolutely required,
like the phrase:
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.