Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

The consideration of quality under its most general aspect rarely comes up in the courts; I refer to questions such as

whether that is honourable which is generally praised.

With regard to the special aspects of quality, questions sometimes occur about some common term, such as whether sacrilege has been committed when a man has stolen private money from a temple, or about some act with a definite name, when there is no doubt either as to the commission or the nature of the act. Under this heading come all questions about what is honourable, just or expedient.

These bases are said to contain others as well, because quantity is sometimes concerned with conjectural bases, as in the question whether the sun is bigger than the earth, and sometimes with qualitative bases, as in the question what reward or punishment it would be just to assign to some particular person, while questions of competence undoubtedly are concerned with quality, and definition with questions of competence. [*]( See § 11 and the case cited in 38, where the accused would argue that he was guilty not of sacrilege, but of simple theft. )