There are a number of different figures by which this effect may be produced. We may, for instance, pretend that we expected something different or feared some greater disaster, or that the judges in their ignorance of the facts may regard some point as of more importance than it really is: an example of this latter device is to be found in the exordium to Cicero's defence of Caelius.I swore not with the Greeks
At Aulis to uproot the race of Troy.Aen. iv. 425. Dido is urging Anna to approach Aeneas and induce Aeneas to postpone his departure. Dido is no enemy from whom he need fly.
[39]
But the term apostrophe is also
applied to utterances that divert the attention of
the hearer from the question before them, as in the
following passage:
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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