(1) The term _sententiæ_ might imply such interpretations as were significant because they were leading. Taken thus, it suggests the saliences which mark, stage by stage, the development of a single, controlling interpretation. But _sententiæ_ was used familiarly of such interpretations as were valuable rather separately than together, for themselves rather than for the furthering of a progressive development—in a word, aphorisms, or epigrams. The latter sense had become the more common, and in fact is what Seneca exhibits. His _declamatores_ seem more concerned to strike now and strike again than to urge on. Though they still distinguish the formal parts (proem, statement, etc.),[44] they are no longer preoccupied with the onward march of the older tradition. For the cogency of progressive development they have substituted the momentary effectiveness of striking summaries. (2) Seneca’s _divisio_, the analysis of the case, shows similarly not the stages of a consecutive order, but merely the components of an arbitrary classification. Given such cases as were posed, even the _divisio_ called for ingenuity. Its preliminary _quæstiones_ sometimes suggest an ingenious and perverted application of the traditional _status_.[45] (3) Under _colores_[46] Seneca exhibits the imaginative development. Meaning generally the tone, or cast—in a large sense, the style, _colores_ means specifically in Seneca’s collection (1) descriptive amplification, and (2) dramatic characterization. Even the descriptions were more than concrete realization of the facts; they were imaginative elaborations. Quintus Haterius, on the side of the father [in the case of the pirate chief’s daughter, above, page 92] evoked a very fine picture. In the abrupt style habitual with him he began to describe, as if he heard the tumult, how everything was laid waste and ravaged, the farms given to the flames, the peasants’ flight; and, when he had amplified the terror, he added: “Why shudder, young man? ’Tis the arrival of your father-in-law.” Seneca, _Controversiæ_, I. 6. 12. [Fabianus] was apter at _suasoriæ_. The local color of places, the courses of rivers, the sites of cities and the habits of their peoples, no one described more amply. Never did he pause for lack of a word. His soothing speech would flow about everything with swiftest and easiest course. _Ibid._ II. præf. 3. More boldly and ingeniously imaginative was the characterization. The case itself being fictitious, the treatment might go the whole length of fiction. At least the _declamatio_ must so enter into the motives, and especially the emotions, of the parties as to make them _dramatis personæ_; at most he might go so far as to supply his imaginary dialogues with a plot.[47] Thus a guilty son is staged in dialogue with his father: I shall die. I shall die. Perhaps. I shall not weep.