[55]
Similar jests may
be produced by the addition or removal of the
aspirate, or by splitting up a word or joining it to
another: the effect is generally poor, but the practice
is occasionally permissible. Jests drawn from names
are of the same type. Cicero introduces a number
of such jests against Verres, but always as quotations
[p. 469]
from others. On one occasion he says that he
would sweep1 everything away, for his name was
Verres; on another, that he had given more trouble
to Hercules, whose temple he had pillaged, than
was given by the Erymanthine “boar”; on another,
that he was a bad “priest” who had left so worthless
a pig behind him.2 For Verres' predecessor was
named Sacerdos.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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