[97]
Irony also is frequently employed in
this connexion. But by far the most artistic device
[p. 437]
is to indicate one thing by allusion to another; take
the case where a rival candidate speaks against an
ex-tyrant who had abdicated on condition of his
receiving an amnesty1: “I am not permitted to
speak against you. Do you speak against me, as
you may. But a little while ago I wished to kill
you.”
1 An example of this theme is preserved in the elder Seneca, Excerpt. controv. 5, 8. One candidate is permitted to speak against another. A tyrant has abdicated on condition of an amnesty and that any one who charged him with having been a tyrant should be liable to capital punishment. The ex-tyrant stands for a magistracy. The rival candidate speaks against him. The irony is in the last sentence.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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