Institutio Oratoria

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.

The man who kills his father shall be sewn up in a sack. He killed his mother,

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. )