As the Emperor Commodus (didn’t actually) put it when chatting to the (utterly fictional) Maximus Decimus Meridius Russellus Crowus in the film Gladiator: The general who became a slave. The slave who became a gladiator. The gladiator who defied an emperor. Striking story. And it is, but only when anadiplosis is on hand. The general who became a slave who became a gladiator who defied an emperor would sound like a rather incoherent nursery rhyme. But perhaps the greatest anadiplosis is not biblical or Shakespearian, it’s simply a description of a dismal dinner, and nobody knows who wrote it:
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