Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
If a thing is legal before a certain occurrence, is it legal after it? Example:
The ravisher took refuge in flight. His victim married. The ravisher returned and the woman demands to be allowed her choice.[*](i. e. the death of the ravisher, see n. on VII. vii. 3. ) Is that which is lawful with regard to the whole, lawful with regard to a part? Example:
It is forbidden to accept a plough as security. He accepted a ploughshare.Is that which is lawful with regard to a part, lawful with regard to the whole? Example:
It is forbidden to export wool from Tarentum: he exported sheep.
In all these cases the syllogism rests on the letter of the law as well: for the accuser urges that the provisions of the law are precise. He will say,
I demand that the priestess who has broken her vows be cast down: it is the law,or
The ravished woman demands the exercise of theorv7-9 p.153choice permitted her by law,
Wool grows on sheep,and so on.
But to this we may reply,
The law does not prescribe that the condemned woman should be thrown down twice, that the ravished woman should exercise her choice under all circumstances, that the tyrannicide should receive two rewards, while it makes no mention of ploughshares or of sheep.Thus we infer what is doubtful from what is certain. It is a more difficult task to deduce from the letter of the law that which is not actually prescribed by the letter, and to argue because that is the case, so also is this. Take the following problems.
The man who kills his father shall be sewn up in a sack. He killed his mother,or
It is illegal to drag a man from his own house into the court. He dragged him from his tent.
Under this heading come questions such as the following: if there is not a special law applicable to the case, ought we to have recourse to an analogous law? is the point in question similar to what is contained in the letter of the law? Now it should be noted that what is similar may be greater, equal or less. In the first ease we enquire whether the provisions of the law are sufficient, or, if they are insufficient, whether we should have recourse to this other law. In both cases it is a question of the intention of the legislator. But the most effective form of treatment in such cases will be to appeal to equity.
I turn to tile discussion of ambiguity, which will be found to have countless species: indeed, in the opinion of certain philosophers, there is not a single word which has not a diversity of meanings. There are, however, very few genera, since ambiguity must occur either in a single word or in a group of words.
Single words give rise to error, when the same noun applies to a number of things or persons (the Greeks call this homonymy): for example, it is uncertain with regard to the word gallus whether it means a cock or a Gaul or a proper name or an emasculated priest of tybele; while Ajax may refer either to the son of Telamon or the son of Oileus. Again, verbs likewise may have different meanings, as, for example, cerno. [*]( See or decide or separate. )
This ambiguity crops up in many ways, and gives rise to disputes, mole especially in connexion with wills, when two men of the same name claim their freedom or, it may be, an inheritance, or again, when the enquiry turns on the precise nature of the bequest.
There is another form of ambiguity where a word has one meaning when entire and another when divided, as, for example, ingenua, armameniam or Corvinum. [*](Inyenua, a freeborn woman; in genua, on to the knees. Armamentum, equipment; arma mentum, arms, chin. Corvinum, ace. of name Corvinus; cor vimium, heart, wine. ) The disputes arising from such ambiguities are no more than childish quibbles, but nevertheless the Greeks are in the habit of making them the subject for controversial themes, as, for example, in the notorious case of the αὐλητρίς, when the question is whether it is a hall which has fallen down three times ( αὔλη τρίς ) or a flute-player who fell down that is to be sold.
A third form of ambiguity is caused by the use of compound words; for example, if a man orders his body to be buried in a cultivated spot, and should direct, as is often done, a considerable space of land surrounding his tomb to be taken from the land left to his heirs with a view to preserving his ashes from outrage, an occasion for dispute may be afforded by the question whether the words mean
in a cultivated place( in culto loco ) or
in an uncultivated place( inculto loco ).
Thus arises the Greek theme
Or it may arise from the arrangement of the words,
- I say that you, O prince of Aeacus' line,
- Rome can o'erthrow.
which makes it doubtful what the exact reference of some word or words may be, more especially when there is a word in the middle of the sentence which may be referred either to what precedes or what follows, as in the line of Virgil [*](Aen. i. 477. ) which describes Troilus as
where it may be disputed whether the poet means that he is still holding the reins, or that, although he holds the reins, he is still dragged along.
- lora tenens tamen,
The controversial theme,
A certain man in his will ordered his heirs to erect statuam auream hastam tenentem,'turns on a similar ambiguity; for it raises the question whether it is the statue holding the spear which is to be of gold, or whether the spear should be of gold and the statue of some other material. The same result is even more frequently produced by a mistaken inflexion of the voice, as in the line:
- quinquaginta uhi erant centum inde occidit Achilles. [*](Achilles slew fifty out of a hundred,ora hundred out of fifty. Translated from a Greek line in Arist. Soph. El. i. 4. ( πεντήκοντ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ἑκατὸν λίπε δῖος ). Quinquaginta is the object of occidit. Faulty reading might make it go with ubi erant, leaving centum as the object of occidit, and making nonsense of the line. )