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 school of Theodorus, as I have said, groups everything under heads, by which they mean several things. First they mean the main question, which is to be identified with the basis; secondly they mean the other questions dependent on the main question, thirdly the proposition and the statement of the proofs. The word is used as we use it when we say
It is the head of the whole business,or, as Menander says, κεφάλαιόν ἐστιν. [*]( Perhaps a gloss referring to the late rhetorician Menander. If genuine, the words must refer to the comic poet. ) But generally speaking, anything which has to be proved will be a head of varying degrees of importance.
though I have done so at a greater length than was necessary. I have also explained what are the various parts of forensic causes. My next book therefore shall deal with the exordium.
I have now, my dear Marcellus Victorius, completed the third book of the work which I have dedicated to you, and have nearly finished a quarter of my task, and am confronted with a motive for renewed diligence and increased anxiety as to the judgment it may be found to deserve. For up to this point we were merely discussing rhetoric between ourselves and, in the event of our system being regarded as inadequate by the world at large, were prepared to content ourselves with putting it into practice at home and to confine ourselves to the education of your son and mine.
But now Domitianus Augustus has entrusted me with the education of his sister's grandsons, and I should be undeserving of the honour conferred upon me by such divine appreciation, if I were not to regard this distinction as the standard by which the greatness of my undertaking must be judged.
For it is clearly my duty to spare no pains in moulding the character of my august pupils, that they may earn the deserved approval of the most righteous of censors. The same applies to their intellectual