Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Those who hold that every question concerns either things or words, mean much the same. It is also agreed that questions are either definite or indefinite. Indefinite questions are those which may be maintained or impugned without reference to persons, time or place and the like. The Greeks call them theses, Cicero [*](Top. xxi. 79. ) propositions, others general questions relating to civil life, others again questions suited for philosophical discussion, while Athenaeus calls them parts of a cause.

Cicero [*](Top. 81; Part. Or. xviii. 62. ) distinguishes two kinds, the one concerned with knowledge, the other with action. Thus

Is the world governed by
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providence?

is a question of knowledge, while

Should we enter politics?

is a question of action. The first involves three questions, whether a thing is, what it is, and of what nature: for all these things may be unknown: the second involves two, how to obtain power and how to use it.

Definite questions involve facts, persons, time and the like. The Greeks call them hypotheses, while we call them causes. In these the whole question turns on persons and facts.

An indefinite question is always the more comprehensive, since it is from the indefinite question that the definite is derived. I will illustrate what I mean by an example. The question

Should a man marry?

is indefinite; the question

Should Cato marry?

is definite, and consequently may be regarded as a subject for a deliberative theme. But even those which have no connexion with particular persons are generally given a specific reference. For instance the question

Ought we to take a share in the government of our country?

is abstract, whereas

Ought we to take part in the government of our country under the sway of a tyrant?

has a specific reference.

But in this latter case we may say that a person is tacitly implied. For the mention of a tyrant doubles the question, and there is an implicit admission of time and quality; but all the same you would scarcely be justified in calling it a cause or definite question. Those questions which I have styled indefinite are also called general: if this is correct, we shall have to call definite questions special questions. But in every special question the general question is implicit, since the genus is logically prior to the species.

And perhaps even in actual causes wherever the notion of quality comes into question, there is a certain intrusion of

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the abstract.

Milo killed Clodius: he was justified in killing one who lay in wait for him.

Does not this raise the general question as to whether we have the right to kill a man who lies in wait for us? What again of conjectures? May not they be of a general character, as for instance,

What was the motive for the crime? hatred? covetousness?

Are we justified in believing confessions made under torture?

Which should carry greater weight, evidence or argument?

As for definitions, everything that they contain is undoubtedly of a general nature.

There are some who hold that even those questions which have reference to persons and particular cases may at times be called theses, provided only they are put slightly differently: for instance, if Orestes be accused, we shall have a cause: whereas if it is put as question, namely

Was Orestes rightly acquitted?

it will be a thesis. To the same class as this last belongs the question

Was Cato right in transferring Marcia to Hortensius?

These persons distinguish a thesis from a cause as follows: a thesis is theoretical in character, while a cause has relation to actual facts, since in the former case we argue merely with a view to abstract truth, while in the latter we have to deal with some particular act.

Some, however, think that general questions are useless to an orator, since no profit is to be derived from proving that we ought to marry or to take part in politics, if we are prevented from so doing by age or ill health. But not all general questions are liable to this kind of objection. For instance questions such as

Is virtue an end in itself?

Is the world governed by providence?

cannot be countered in this way.

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.