Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
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.
Sometimes we shall even have to hoodwink the judge and work upon him by various artifices so that he may think that our aim is other than what it really is. For there are cases when a proposition may be somewhat startling: if the judge foresees this, he will shrink from it in advance, like a patient who catches sight of the surgeon's knife before the operation. On the other hand, if we have given him no preliminary notice and our words take him unawares, without his interest in them having been previously roused by any warning, we shall gain a credence which we should not have secured had we stated that we were going to raise the point.
At times we must not merely avoid distinguishing between the various questions, but must omit them altogether, while our audience must be distracted by appeals to the emotion and their attention diverted. For the duty of the orator is not