Institutio Oratoria

Other theses too belong entirely to the deliberative class of oratory, as for instance the questions as to

Whether marriage is desirable

or

Whether a public career is a proper object of ambition.

Put such discussions into the mouths of specific persons and they become deliberative declamations at once.

My own teachers used to prepare us for conjectural cases by a form of exercise which was at once useful and attractive: they made us discuss and develop questions such as

Why in Sparta is Venus represented as wearing armour?

[*]( The reason according to Lactantius ( Inst. Div. i. 20) was the bravery of the Spartan women in one of the Messenian wars. ) or

Why is Cupid believed to be a winged boy armed with arrows and a torch?

and the like. In these exercises our aim was to discover the intention implied, a question which frequently occurs in controversial declamations. Such themes may perhaps be regarded as a kind of chria or moral essay.