CLIMAX

(a step or ladder), is commonly called a figure of rhetoric, but it is properly only an artifice of style. In accordance with the primary meaning of the Greek word, a climax in composition is a mode of expression by which the writer mounts, as it were, from one clause to another, as if he were climbing a series of steps. In other words, each clause expresses a higher degree of that which is stated in the preceding clause. The three words which Suetonius records to have been uttered on occasion of one of his victories by Julius Cæsar--'I came, I saw, I conquered'-- form a climax.