On hyperbolical ideas._

In the category of false ideas must be reckoned the hyperbolical.
These are not false in a given word, for we dealt with this above, but
false in the whole train of thought. Of this kind is that epigram of
Ausonius, the absurdity of which is unbearable:

Riding in state, as on an elephant,
Faustus fell backwards off a silly ant;
Abandoned, tortured to the point of death
By the sharp hooves, his soul stayed on his breath
And his voice broke: "Envy," he cried, "begone!
Laugh not at my fall! So fell Phaethon."[13]

Ausonius was imitating in this epigram the Greeks, who were quite open
to this sort of bad imitation, as may be seen in their Anthology which
is stuffed full of such hyperboles. A good many fall into the same
fault either because their talent is weak or because they write for
the unskilled--a consideration which should move those who have no
compunction about reading, let alone praising, the silly tales of
Rabelais which are filled with stupid hyperboles.

_On debatable and controvertible ideas._

Furthermore, debatable and double-edged ideas, about which the reader
is in doubt whether they be false or true, fall under the same
category of falseness. For this doubtfulness, since it takes away all
pleasure, removes also the beauty. For this reason I have never
approved the conclusion of Martial's epigram:

Equal the crime of Antony and Photinus:
This sword and that severed a sacred head--
The one head laurelled for your triumphs, Rome!
The other eloquent when you would speak.
Yet Antony's case was worse than was Photinus':
One for his master moved, one for himself.[14]

The reader is bothered by a sort of quiet annoyance that the poet
should so confidently take a dubious idea for a certain one. He might
easily argue against the poet that on the contrary it seemed to him
that a man who commits a crime for his master is more at fault than
one who commits it for himself, and he could support his position with
rational arguments. For one who sins for his own advantage is driven
to his deed by such emotions as rage, lust, and fear, and these as
they diminish the power of willing in like measure diminish the
magnitude of the offence. But one who effects a crime at another's
behest comes coldly to the deed, a fact that convicts him of a far
greater depravity. One could allege these and similar lines of
argument against Martial's positi