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That is why the lengths of cola matter—isocolon being a balancing of clauses of the same length: “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons”—and why a “rising tricolon,” strictly defined, is one in which the clauses increase not necessarily in importance but in length: “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Reductio ad absurdum, by this token, would be classed as a figure of thought, whereas isocolon—a sequence of phrases the same length—or alliteration would be figures of speech.