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 subjects chosen for themes should, therefore, be as true to life as possible, and the actual declamation should, as far as may be, be modelled on the pleadings for which it was devised as a training.
For we shall hunt in vain among sponsions [*](sponsio (= a wager) was a form of lawsuit in which the litigant promised to pay a certain sum of money if he lost his case. The interdict was an order issued by the praetor commanding or prohibiting certain action. It occurred chiefly in disputes about property. ) and interdicts for magicians and plagues and oracles and stepmothers more cruel than any in tragedy, and other