Style Project Bellum Catilinae: 20.8-20.11
Style
Catiline, in this portion of his speech, contrasts the wealth and luxury of the political elites, whom were introduced in the previous section, to the poverty and suffering of he and his coconspirators. Throughout this section, Sallust juxtaposes the privileges of the elites with the injustices suffered by everyone else. He frequently employs parataxis where the first clause states the conditions for illos and in the following clause states the condtions of nobis. Alternating between statements of action and rhetorical questions, which are used to emphasize the inequity driving the actions, Catiline drives forward his argument that the elites must be overthrown. The logic of this argument is guided by the use of transitional words or phrases. For example, following the first set of rhetorical questions where Catiline asks if it is better to suffer idly or take…show more content… In the last few sentences, there are a few instances of varied word order such as viget aetas, animus valet. This particular instance of chiasmus draws attention to the conspirators' inner strengths and alliteration makes the statement more memorable and therefore powerful. He uses chiastic word order again in sentence 11 so as to make mari et montibus closer reflecting that the elites were trying to make them equal. Furthermore, in sentence 10, the direct object cetera comes before the subject res, I think this may be a poetic technique in order for the first and second clauses to have the same number of syllables. If one were to scan this section the elisions in the first clause result in 8 syllables, and in the second, Sallust changes the word order to prevent an elision from occurring between cetera expediet, thus it has 8 syllables as
