Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

For the

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accuser does not merely say

You killed him,

but sets forth the facts proving his assertion: tragedy will provide an example, where Teucer accuses Ulysses of murdering Ajax, and states that he was found in a lonely place near the lifeless body of his enemy with a blood-stained sword in his hands. To this Ulysses does not merely reply that he did not do the deed, but adds that he had no quarrel with Ajax, the contest between them having been concerned solely with the winning of renown: he then goes on to say how he came to be in the lonely place, how he found Ajax lying lifeless and drew the sword from the wound. Then follow arguments based on these facts.

But even when the accuser says

You were found on the spot where your enemy was killed

and the accused says

I was not,

a statement of facts is involved; for he must say where he was. Consequently cases of bribery and extortion will require as many statements of this kind as there are charges: the charges themselves will be denied, but it will be necessary to counter the arguments of the accuser either singly or all together by setting forth the facts in quite a different light.

Is it, I ask you, irrelevant for one accused of bribery to set forth his parentage, his past life and the services on which he relied for success in his candidature? And if a man is indicted for extortion, will it not be to his advantage to set forth not merely his past record, but also the reasons which have made the whole province or the accuser or a witness hostile to himself?

If these are not statements of facts, neither is the first portion of Cicero's [*](V. 11.) defence of Cluentius, beginning with the words

Aulus Cluentius Habitus.

For there he says nothing about the charge

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of poisoning, but confines himself entirely to setting forth the reasons for the hostility of Cluentius' mother to her son.

There are also statements which do not set forth the facts of the case itself, but facts which are none the less relevant to the case: the speaker's purpose may be to illustrate the case by some parallel, as in the passage in the Verrines [*]( V. 3. The shepherd was crucifed because the carrying of arms was forbidden. ) about Lucius Domitius who crucified a shepherd because he admitted that he had used a hunting spear to kill the boar which he had brought him as a present;

or he may desire to dispel some charge that is irrelevant to the case as in the passage of the speech for Rabirius Postumus, [*]( X. 28. The charge in question was that Rabirius had worn the Greek pallium instead of the Roman toga. But as an official of the king he was forced to wear Greek dress. ) which runs as follows:

For when he came to Alexandria, gentlemen, the only means of saving his money which the king suggested to Postumus was that he should take charge of the royal household and act as a kind of steward.

Or the orator may desire to heighten the effect of his charges, as Cicero [*](Verr. v. 10. ) does in his description of the journey of Verres.

Sometimes a fictitious statement is employed either to stir the emotions of the judges, as in that passage of the proo Roscio Amerino [*](xxii. 60.) dealing with Chrysogonus to which I referred just recently, or to entertain them with a show of wit, as in the passage of the pro Cluentio [*]( xx. 57 sqq. ) describing the brothers Caepasius: sometimes again a digression may be introduced to add beauty to the speech, as in the passage about Proserpine in the Verrines, [*]( IV. 48. The words quoted do not occur in our MSS of Cicero. ) beginning

It was here that a mother is once said to have sought her daughter.

All these examples serve to show that he who denies a charge may not necessarily refrain from stating, but may actually state that very fact which he denies.

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Even the assertion which I made above to the effect that a statement of facts familiar to the judge is superfluous, is not to be taken too literally. My meaning is that it may be dispensed with, if the judge knows not merely what has been done, but takes a view of the facts which is favourable to our case.