Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Further in questions

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which have reference to a particular person, although it is not sufficient merely to handle the general question, we cannot arrive at any conclusion on the special point until we have first discussed the general question. For how is Cato to deliberate

whether he personally is to marry,

unless the general question

whether marriage is desirable

is first settled? And how is he to deliberate

whether he should marry Marcia,

unless it is proved that it is the duty of Cato to marry?

There are, however, certain books attributed to Hermagoras which support this erroneous opinion, though whether the attribution is spurious or whether they were written by another Hermagoras is an open question. For they cannot possibly be by the famous Hermagoras, who wrote so much that was admirable on the art of rhetoric, since, as is clear from the first book of the Rhetorica of Cicero, [*](de Inv. i. 6. ) he divided the material of rhetoric into theses and causes. Cicero objects to this division, contends that theses have nothing to do with an orator, and refers all this class of questions to the philosophers.

But Cicero has relieved me of any feeling of shame that I might have in controverting his opinion, since he has not only expressed his disapproval of his Rhetorica, but in the Orator, [*](Orator xiv. 45. ) the de Oratore and the Topica [*](de Or. iii. 30; Top. 21. ) instructs us to abstract such discussions from particular persons and occasions,

because we can speak more fully on general than on special themes, and because what is proved of the whole must also be proved of the part.

In all general questions, however, the essential basis is the same as in a cause or definite question. It is further pointed out that there are some questions which

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concern

things in themselves,

while others have a particular reference; an example of the former will be the question

Should a man marry?

of the latter

Should an old man marry?

; or again the question whether a man is brave will illustrate the first, while the question whether he is braver than another will exemplify the second.

Apollodorus defines a cause in the following terms (I quote the translation of his pupil Valgius):—

A cause is a matter which in all its parts bears on the question at issue,

or again

a cause is a matter of which the question in dispute is the object.

He then defines a matter in the following terms:— " A matter is a combination of persons, circumstances of place and time, motives, means, incidents, acts, instruments, speeches, the letter and the spirit of the law.

Let us then understand a cause in the sense of the Greek hypothesis or subject, and a matter in the sense of the Greek peristasis or collection of circumstances. But some, however, have defined a cause in the same way that Apollodorus defines a matter. Isocrates [*](Fr. 13 Sheehan.) on the other hand defines a cause as some definite question concerned with some point of civil affairs, or a dispute in which definite persons are involved; while Cicero [*](Top. xxi. 80. ) uses the following words:—

A cause may be known by its being concerned with certain definite persons, circumstances of time and place, actions, and business, and will relate either to all or at any rate to most of these.

VI. [*]( This chapter is highly technical and of little interest for the most part to any save professed students of the technique of the ancient schools of rhetoric. Its apparent obscurity will, however, he found to disappear on careful analysis. The one passage of general interest it contains is to be found in the extremely ingenious fictitious theme discussed in sections 96 sqq. ) Since every cause, then, has a certain essential basis [*]( There is no exact English equivalent for status. Basis or ground are perhaps the nearest equivalents. ) on which it rests, before I proceed to set forth how each kind of cause should be handled, I think I

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should first examine a question that is common to all of them, namely, what is meant by basis, whence it is derived and how many and of what nature such bases may be. Some, it is true, have thought that they were peculiar merely to forensic themes, but their ignorance will stand revealed when I have treated of all three kinds of oratory.

That which I call the basis some style the constitution, others the question, and others again that which may be inferred from the question, while Theodorus calls it the most general head, κεφάλαιον γενικώτατον, to which everything must be referred. These different names, however, all mean the same thing, nor is it of the least importance to students by what special name things are called, as long as the thing itself is perfectly clear.

The Greeks call this essential basis στάσις, a name which they hold was not invented by Hermagoras, but according to some was introduced by Naucrates, the pupil of Isocrates, according to others by Zopyrus of Clazomenae, although Aeschines in his speech against Ctesiphon [*](§ 206.) seems to employ the word, when he asks the jury not to allow Demosthenes to be irrelevant but to keep him to the stasis or basis of the case.

The term seems to be derived from the fact that it is on it that the first collision between the parties to the dispute takes place, or that it forms the basis or standing of the whole case. So much for the origin of the name. Now for its nature. Some have defined the basis as being the first conflict of the causes. The idea is correct, but the expression is faulty.

For the essential basis is not the first conflict, which we may represent by the clauses

You did such and such a thing

and

I did not do it.

It is rather the kind of question which arises from the first conflict,

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which we may represent as follows.

You did it,

I did not,

Did he do it?,

You did this,

I did not do this,

What did he do?

It is clear from these examples, that the first sort of question depends on conjecture, the second on definition, and that the contending parties rest their respective cases on these points: the bases of these questions will therefore be of a conjectural or definitive character respectively.

Suppose it should be asserted that sound is the conflict between two bodies, the statement would in my opinion be erroneous. For sound is not the actual conflict, but a result of the conflict. The error is, however, of small importance: for the sense is clear, whatever the expression. But this trivial mistake has given rise to a very serious error in the minds of those who have not understood what was meant: for on reading that the essential basis was the first conflict, they immediately concluded that the basis was always to be taken from the first question, which is a grave mistake.

For every question has its basis, since every question is based on assertion by one party and denial by another. But there are some questions which form an essential part of causes, and it is on these that we have to express an opinion; while others are introduced from without and are, strictly speaking, irrelevant, although they may contribute something of a subsidiary nature to the general contention. It is for this reason that there are said to be several questions in one matter of dispute.

Of these questions it is often the most trivial which occupies the first place. For it is a frequent artifice to drop those points in which we place least confidence, as soon as we have dealt with them; sometimes we make a free gift of them to our

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opponents, while sometimes we are content to use them as a step to arguments which are of greater importance.