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 defence may also contain several propositions: for instance against a claim for money we may urge,
Your claim is invalid; for you had no right to act as agent nor had the party whom you represent any right to employ an agent: further, he is not the heir of the man from whom it is asserted that I borrowed the money, nor am I his debtor.
These propositions can be multiplied at pleasure, but it is sufficient to give an indication of my meaning. If propositions are put forward singly with the proofs appended, they will form several distinct propositions: if they are combined, they fall under the head of partition.
A proposition may also be put forward unsupported, as is generally done in conjectural cases:
The formal accusation is one of murder, but I also charge the accused with theft.Or it may be accompanied by a reason:
Gaius Cornelius is guilty of an offence against the state; for when he was tribune of the plebs, he himself read out his bill to the public assembly.[*]( The speech is lost. In 67 B.C. Cornelius as tribune of the plebs proposed a law enacting that no man should be released from the obligations of a law save by decree of the people. This struck at a privilege usurped by the senate, and Servilius Globulus, another tribune, forbade the herald to read out the proposal. Cornelius then read it himself. He was accused of maiestas, defended by Cicero in 65 B.C. and acquitted. ) I In addition to these forms of proposition we can also introduce a proposition of our own, such as
I accuse him of adultery,or may use the proposition of our opponent, such as
The charge brought against me is one of adultery,or finally we may employ a proposition which is common to both sides, such as
The question in dispute between myself and my opponent is, which of the two is next-of-kin to the deceased who died intestate.Sometimes we may even couple contradictory propositions, as for instance
I say this, my opponent says that.
We may at times produce the effect of a proposition, even though it is not in itself a proposition, by adding after the statement of facts some phrase such as the following:
These are the points on which you will give your decision,thereby reminding the judge to give special attention to the question and giving him a fillip to emphasise the point that we have finished the statement of facts and are beginning the proof, so that when we start to verify our statements he may realise that he has reached a fresh stage where he must begin to listen with renewed attention.
V. Partition may be defined as the enumeration in order of our own propositions, those of our adversary or both. It is held by some that this is indispensable on the ground that it makes the case clearer and the judge more attentive and more ready to be instructed, if he knows what we are speaking about and what we are going subsequently to speak about.
Others, on the contrary, think that such a course is dangerous to the speaker on two grounds, namely that sometimes we may forget to perform what we have promised and may, on the other hand, come upon something which we have omitted in the partition. But this will never happen to anyone unless he is either a fool or has come into court without thinking out his speech in detail beforehand.
Besides, what can be simpler or clearer than a straightforward partition ? It follows nature as a guide and the adhesion to a definite method is actually of the greatest assistance to the speaker's memory. Therefore I cannot approve the view even of those who lay down that partition should not extend beyond the length of three propositions. No doubt there is a danger, if our partition is too complicated, that it
There are further reasons why we should sometimes dispense with partition. In the first place there are many points which can be produced in a more attractive manner, if they appear to be discovered on the spot and not to have been brought ready made from our study, but rather to have sprung from the requirements of the case itself while we were speaking. Thus we get those not unpleasing figures such as
It has almost escaped me,
I had forgotten,or
You do well to remind me.For if we set forth all that we propose to prove in advance, we shall deprive ourselves of the advantage springing from tile charm of novelty.