It is not enough, says Quintilian (7.10.16), to assemble the various parts of a speech. The orator must arrange his points in the natural and logical order for his purposes, and he must unify the different sections so skilfully that no join will show (‘ne commissura perluceat’), producing a single body instead of assorted limbs. If we define ascommissura(ortransitus)the rhetorical device which welds together different themes or chapters with an associative link in word or thought (sometimes matching like with like, (...) more frequently depending on antithesis), Tacitus already had this lesson by heart when he wrote theGermania. That he exploited the same technique in his major works, concentrating on his transitions as hard as would Macaulay on his, appears not to have been noticed, and certainly has not received systematic study. (shrink)