Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

We are right therefore in speaking of the first conflict of causes in contradistinction to the conflict of questions. For instance in the first portion of his speech on behalf of Rabirius Postumus Cicero contends that the action cannot lie against a Roman knight, while in the second he asserts that no money ever came into his client's hands. Still I should say that the basis was to be found in the latter as being the stronger of the two.

Again in the case of Milo I do not consider that the conflict is raised by the opening questions, but only when the orator devotes all his powers to prove that Clodius lay in wait for Milo and was therefore rightly killed. The point on which above all the orator must make up his mind, even although he may be going to

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take up various lines of argument in support of his case, is this: what is it that he wishes most to impress upon the mind of the judge? But although this should be the first point for his consideration, it does not follow that it should be the first that he will make in his actual speech.