Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book 8, chapter 2, section 15

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[15] parenthesis, so often employed by orators and historians, and consisting in the insertion of one sentence in the midst of another, may seriously hinder the understanding of a passage, unless the insertion is short. For example, in the passage where Vergil¹ describes a colt, the words

“Nor fears he empty noises,
”

are followed by a number of remarks of a totally different form, and it is only four lines later that the poet returns to the point and says,

“Then, if tile sound of arms be heard afar,
How to stand still he knows not.
”

Above all, ambiguity must be avoided,

1 Georg. iii. 79–83.

Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.

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