[78]
Cassius Severus
showed his wit by transferring a charge made against
himself to a different quarter. For when lie was
reproached by the praetor on the ground that his
advocates had insulted Lucius Varus, an Epicurean
and a friend of Caesar, he replied, “I do not know
who they were who insulted him, I suppose they
were Stoics.”
Of retorts there are a number of forms, the wittiest
being that which is helped out by a certain verbal
similarity, as in the retort made by Trachalus to
Suelius. The latter had said, “If that is the case,
you go into exile”: to which Trachalus replied,
“And if it is not the case, you go back into exile.”1
1 The point is obscure; we have no key to the circumstances of the jest.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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