Institutio Oratoria

Apollodorus defines a cause in the following terms (I quote the translation of his pupil Valgius):—

A cause is a matter which in all its parts bears on the question at issue,

or again

a cause is a matter of which the question in dispute is the object.

He then defines a matter in the following terms:— " A matter is a combination of persons, circumstances of place and time, motives, means, incidents, acts, instruments, speeches, the letter and the spirit of the law.

Let us then understand a cause in the sense of the Greek hypothesis or subject, and a matter in the sense of the Greek peristasis or collection of circumstances. But some, however, have defined a cause in the same way that Apollodorus defines a matter. Isocrates [*](Fr. 13 Sheehan.) on the other hand defines a cause as some definite question concerned with some point of civil affairs, or a dispute in which definite persons are involved; while Cicero [*](Top. xxi. 80. ) uses the following words:—

A cause may be known by its being concerned with certain definite persons, circumstances of time and place, actions, and business, and will relate either to all or at any rate to most of these.