Institutio Oratoria

When, however, we are confronted by decrees of the senate, or ordinances of emperors or magistrates, there is no remedy, unless we can make out that there is some difference, however small, between the cases, or that the same persons or persons holding the same powers have made some subsequent enactment reversing the former decision. Failing this, there will be no case for judgment.

With regard to rumour and common report, one party will call them the verdict of public opinion and the testimony of the world at large; the other will describe them as vague talk based on no sure authority, to which malignity has given birth and credulity increase, an ill to which even the most innocent of men may be exposed by the deliberate dissemination of falsehood on the part of their enemies. It will be easy for both parties to produce precedents to support their arguments.