[54]
Writers
have given special names to all the different forms,
but the names vary with the caprice of the inventor.
The origin of these figures is one and the same,
namely that they make our utterances more vigorous
and emphatic and produce animpression of vehemence
such as might spring from repeated outbursts of
emotion.
Gradation, which the Greeks call climax, necessitates a more obvious and less natural application of
art and should therefore be more sparingly employed.
Moreover, it involves addition,
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.