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Hyperbaton and register in Cicero 177
Fannium qui scripsit historiam generum esse scripseram Laeli ‘this Fannius
who wrote the history I had said was the son-in-law of Laelius’ (Att. 12.5b),
where the point at issue is that one of two easily confused Fannii was
identified as the son-in-law of Laelius (not whose son-in-law he was, nor
what relation he bore to Laelius); or est ornamentum Academiae proprium
meae ‘it is a suitable ornament for my Academy’ (Att. 1.4.3), where Cicero
is not distinguishing his Academy from some other, nor his Academy from
his Lyceum, but equally stresses both components of the phrase.
(iii) A rarer type may be provisionally called ‘double-focus’ hyperbaton,
in which not only the enclosing noun phrase but also an intervening
constituent carries focus. This is to be distinguished from long-range
hyperbaton, because the first element of the enclosing noun phrase is not a
‘preferential’ word, and from short-range hyperbaton, because in the latter
the intervening word or phrase is unfocused. The precise mechanics of
this type have still to be elucidated and it is uncommon enough not to
be further considered in this preliminary sketch: I content myself with
mentioning a few examples, beginning with the Rhetorica ad Herennium’s
first example instabilis in istum plurimum fortuna valuit (4.44), where evidently
plurimum is focused as much as instabilis. Further cases occur in
the Rhetorica ad Herennium’s examples of the grand style (4.12): qui satis
idoneam possit in eum poenam excogitare, qui prodere hostibus patriam cogitarit
‘...whocouldexcogitateapenalty fitting enough for him who has
bethought himself to betray his country to the enemy’, where in eum is
focused as the antecedent of qui; urbs acerbissimo concidat incendio conflagrata
‘the city would collapse set in flames by a most horrific conflagration’
(rhythmical considerations may be at work here); se non putant id quod
voluerint ad exitum perduxisse, nisi sanctissimae patriae miserandum scelerati
viderint cinerem ‘they do not think that they can bring what they desire to
its conclusion unless in their wickedness they have seen the piteous ashes
of their most holy fatherland’. In view of this, it could well be that this
particular kind of hyperbaton was seen as characteristic of the grand, if
not over-grand, rhetorical style. Instances in Cicero himself are not easy to
find, though one may cite statim cruentum alte extollens Brutus pugionem
Ciceronem nominatim exclamavit ‘at once Brutus raising high his bloody
dagger shouted for Cicero by name’ (Phil. 2.28).Butthisisapurported
quotation from Antony, and could well therefore be untypical of Cicero’s
systematically on the one hand between long-range and short-range pre-modifier hyperbaton, and
on the other hand between short-range post-modifier hyperbaton and effects of topicalisation, their
discussion is not as clear as it could be.