Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Every artificial proof consists either of indications, arguments or examples. I am well aware that many consider indications to form part of the arguments. My reasons for distinguishing them are twofold. In the first place indications as a rule come under the head of inartificial proofs: for a bloodstained garment, a shriek, a dark blotch and the like are all evidence analogous to documentary or oral evidence and rumours; they are not discovered by the orator, but are given him with the case itself.

My second reason was that indications, if indubitable, are not arguments, since they leave no room for question, while arguments are only possible in controversial matters. If on the other hand they are doubtful, they are not arguments, but require arguments to support them.

The two first species into which artificial proofs

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may be divided are, as I have already said, those which involve a conclusion and those which do not. The former are those which cannot be otherwise and are called τεκμήρια, by the Greeks, because they are indications from which there is no getting away. These however seem to me scarcely to come under the rules of art. For where an indication is irrefutable, there can be no dispute as to facts.

This happens whenever there can be no doubt that something is being or has been done, or when it is impossible for it to be or have been done. In such cases there can be no dispute as to the fact. This kind of proof may be considered in connexion with past, present or future time.

For example, a woman who is delivered of a child must have had intercourse with a man, and the reference is to the past. When there is a high wind at sea, there must be waves, and the reference is to the present. When a man has received a wound in the heart, he is bound to die, and the reference is to the future. Nor again can there be a harvest where no seed has been sown, nor can a man be at Rome when he is at Athens, nor have been wounded by a sword when he has no scar. Some have the same force when reversed:

a man who breathes is alive, and a man who is alive breathes. Some again cannot be reversed: because he who walks moves it does not follow that he who moves walks.

So too a woman, who has not been delivered of a child, may have had intercourse with a man, there may be waves without a high wind, and a man may die without having received a wound in the heart. Similarly seed may be sown without a harvest resulting, a man, who was never at Athens, may

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never have been at Rome, and a man who has a scar may not have received a sword-wound.