Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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?

Is the world governed by providence?

cannot be countered in this way.

Further in questions

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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.

But Cicero has relieved me of any feeling of shame that I might have in controverting his opinion, since he has not only expressed his disapproval of his Rhetorica, but in the Orator, [*](Orator xiv. 45. ) the de Oratore and the Topica [*](de Or. iii. 30; Top. 21. ) instructs us to abstract such discussions from particular persons and occasions,

because we can speak more fully on general than on special themes, and because what is proved of the whole must also be proved of the part.

In all general questions, however, the essential basis is the same as in a cause or definite question. It is further pointed out that there are some questions which

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concern

things in themselves,

while others have a particular reference; an example of the former will be the question

Should a man marry?

of the latter

Should an old man marry?

; or again the question whether a man is brave will illustrate the first, while the question whether he is braver than another will exemplify the second.

Apollodorus defines a cause in the following terms (I quote the translation of his pupil Valgius):—

A cause is a matter which in all its parts bears on the question at issue,

or again

a cause is a matter of which the question in dispute is the object.

He then defines a matter in the following terms:— " A matter is a combination of persons, circumstances of place and time, motives, means, incidents, acts, instruments, speeches, the letter and the spirit of the law.

Let us then understand a cause in the sense of the Greek hypothesis or subject, and a matter in the sense of the Greek peristasis or collection of circumstances. But some, however, have defined a cause in the same way that Apollodorus defines a matter. Isocrates [*](Fr. 13 Sheehan.) on the other hand defines a cause as some definite question concerned with some point of civil affairs, or a dispute in which definite persons are involved; while Cicero [*](Top. xxi. 80. ) uses the following words:—

A cause may be known by its being concerned with certain definite persons, circumstances of time and place, actions, and business, and will relate either to all or at any rate to most of these.

VI. [*]( This chapter is highly technical and of little interest for the most part to any save professed students of the technique of the ancient schools of rhetoric. Its apparent obscurity will, however, he found to disappear on careful analysis. The one passage of general interest it contains is to be found in the extremely ingenious fictitious theme discussed in sections 96 sqq. ) Since every cause, then, has a certain essential basis [*]( There is no exact English equivalent for status. Basis or ground are perhaps the nearest equivalents. ) on which it rests, before I proceed to set forth how each kind of cause should be handled, I think I

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should first examine a question that is common to all of them, namely, what is meant by basis, whence it is derived and how many and of what nature such bases may be. Some, it is true, have thought that they were peculiar merely to forensic themes, but their ignorance will stand revealed when I have treated of all three kinds of oratory.

That which I call the basis some style the constitution, others the question, and others again that which may be inferred from the question, while Theodorus calls it the most general head, κεφάλαιον γενικώτατον, to which everything must be referred. These different names, however, all mean the same thing, nor is it of the least importance to students by what special name things are called, as long as the thing itself is perfectly clear.