Institutio Oratoria

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

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.