[22]
This device may also
serve to carry off a jest, as in the passage of Cicero
where he talks of the “little sprat of a boy who slept
with his elder sister,”1 or where he speaks of “Flavius,
who put out the eyes of crows,”2 or, again, in the
pro Milone,3 cries, “Hi, there! Rufio!” and talks of
“Erucius Antoniaster.”4 On the other hand, this
practice becomes more obtrusive when employed in
the schools, like the phrase that was so much
praised in my boyhood, “Give your father bread,” or
in the same declamation, “You feed even your dog.”5
But such tricks do not always come off,
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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