E. M. Cope, Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle

---

---

‘All approved hyperboles are also metaphors’, i. e. a mere hyperbola, without metaphor, will not be approved. On the hyperbole, Auct. ad Heren. IV 33. 44, superlatio est oratio superans veritatem alicuius augendi minuendive causa, et seq. Cic. Topic. c. X § 45, aut aliquid quod fieri nullo modo possit augendae rei gratia dicatur, aut minuendae, quae hyperbole dicitur. Quint. VIII 6. 67—76, Hyperbolen audacioris ornatus summo loco posui. Est haec decens veri superiectio. Virtus eius ex diverso par augendi atqueminuendi. Then follow the description and illustration of its several varieties. In Ernesti, Lex. Techn. (both Greek and Latin), hyperbole is omitted. ὑπερβολή is in fact ‘exaggeration’. ‘For instance (what was said) to (or against, for the purpose of exaggeration, making the most of it) the man with the black eye, “you'ld have taken him for a basket of mulberries”. For the black eye¹ is something red’ (and so is the mulberry; the colour is similar; and therefore so far it is a metaphor from one red thing—purple is nearer to the true colour—to another, εἶδος πρὸς εἶδος); ‘but the hyperbole or exaggeration’ (σφόδρα, which distinguishes it from metaphor) ‘lies in the excessive quantity’, (i. e. in the absurdly exaggerated number of black spots represented by a whole basket of mulberries. Victorius). According to Theophrastus, de Caus. Plant. VI 6. 4, there are two kinds of mulberries, red and white, ἐρυθρὸν καὶ λευκόν. This is an instance of Quintilian's first variety of hyperbole; quum plus facto dicimus, direct exaggeration; of which two examples are given. Victorius refers to the saying of an Athenian wag about Sulla, συκάμινόν ἐσθ᾽ ὁ Σύλλας ἀλφίτῳ πεπασμένον, “Sulla (i. e. his face) is like a mulberry powdered with flour”, in Plutarch [Sulla, c. 2, p. 451 F].

‘And another (kind of phrase) like so and so’ (comp. τὰ καὶ τά, infra c. 17. 11; this seems to mean the two preceding examples, which are here repeated, and others like them) ‘is a hyperbole, differing from it merely by the form of the expression (it becomes a hyperbole by dropping the particle of comparison, ὥσπερ). Thus “like Philammon at close quarters with the sack”, (may be thrown into the form of a hyperbole, thus), “you would have taken him for Philammon fighting the sack”. Again, “to wear his legs curly like parsley”, becomes “you'ld have thought his legs not legs, but parsley, so crooked are they”’. This is Quintilian's second variety of hyperbole, u. s. § 68, superiectio per similitudinem, aut per comparationem: illustrated by Credas innare revulsas Cycladas, Virg. Aen. VIII 691.