Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

There are some who hold that even those questions which have reference to persons and particular cases may at times be called theses, provided only they are put slightly differently: for instance, if Orestes be accused, we shall have a cause: whereas if it is put as question, namely

Was Orestes rightly acquitted?
it will be a thesis. To the same class as this last belongs the question
Was Cato right in transferring Marcia to Hortensius?
These persons distinguish a thesis from a cause as follows: a thesis is theoretical in character, while a cause has relation to actual facts, since in the former case we argue merely with a view to abstract truth, while in the latter we have to deal with some particular act.

Some, however, think that general questions are useless to an orator, since no profit is to be derived from proving that we ought to marry or to take part in politics, if we are prevented from so doing by age or ill health. But not all general questions are liable to this kind of objection. For instance questions such as

Is virtue an end in itself?
or
Is the world governed by providence?
cannot be countered in this way.

Further in questions

v1-3 p.405
which have reference to a particular person, although it is not sufficient merely to handle the general question, we cannot arrive at any conclusion on the special point until we have first discussed the general question. For how is Cato to deliberate
whether he personally is to marry,
unless the general question
whether marriage is desirable
is first settled? And how is he to deliberate
whether he should marry Marcia,
unless it is proved that it is the duty of Cato to marry?

There are, however, certain books attributed to Hermagoras which support this erroneous opinion, though whether the attribution is spurious or whether they were written by another Hermagoras is an open question. For they cannot possibly be by the famous Hermagoras, who wrote so much that was admirable on the art of rhetoric, since, as is clear from the first book of the Rhetorica of Cicero, [*](de Inv. i. 6. ) he divided the material of rhetoric into theses and causes. Cicero objects to this division, contends that theses have nothing to do with an orator, and refers all this class of questions to the philosophers.