Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

But for these early efforts Cicero

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substituted his splendid de Oratore and therefore cannot be blamed for giving false instruction. I will now return to Hermagoras. He was the first rhetorician to teach that there was a basis concerned with competence, although the elements of this doctrine are found in Aristotle, [*](Rhet. II. xv. 8. ) without however any mention of the name.

The legal questions were according to Hermagoras of five kinds. First the letter of the law and its intention; the names which he gives to these are κατὰ ῥητόν and ὑπεξαίρεσις, that is to say the letter of the law and the exceptions thereto: the first of these classes is found in all writers, but the term exception is less in use. The number is completed by the ratiocinative basis and those dealing with ambiguity and contradictory laws.

Albutius adopts this classification, but eliminates competence, including it under the juridical basis. Further he holds that in legal questions there is no ratiocinative basis. I know that those who are prepared to read ancient writers on rhetoric more carefully than I have, will be able to discover yet more on this subject, but I fear that I may have been too lengthy even in saying what I have said.

I must admit that I am now inclined to take a different view from that which I once held. It would perhaps be safer for my reputation if I were to make no modification in views which I not only held for so many years, but of which I expressed my open approbation.

But I cannot bear to be thought guilty of concealment of the truth as regards any portion of my views, more especially in a work designed for the profit of young men of sound disposition. For Hippocrates, [*](Epidem V. 14. ) the great physician, in my opinion took the most honourable course in acknowledging some of

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his errors to prevent those who came after from being led astray, while Cicero had no hesitation about condemning some of his earlier works in books which he published later: I refer to his condemnation of his Lucullus and Catulus [*]( The two books of the first edition of the Academica. ) and the books [*](i.e. the Rhetorica, better known as de Inventione. ) on rhetoric which I have already mentioned.

Indeed we should have no justification for protracting our studies if we were forbidden to improve upon our original views. Still none of my past teaching was superfluous: for the views which I am now going to produce will be found to be based on the same principles, and consequently no one need be sorry to have attended my lectures, since all that I am now attempting to do is to collect and rearrange my original views so that they may be somewhat more instructive. But I wish to satisfy everybody and not to lay myself open to the accusation that I have allowed a long time to elapse between the formation and publication of my views.

I used to follow the majority of authorities in adhering to three rational bases, the conjectural, qualitative and definitive, and to one legal basis. [*](See III. v. 4.) These were my general bases. The legal basis I divided into five species, dealing with the letter of the law and intention, contradictory laws, the syllogism, ambiguity and competence.

It is now clear to me that the fourth of the general bases may be removed, since the original division which I made into rational and legal bases is sufficient. The fourth therefore will not be a basis, but a kind of question; if it were not, it would form one of the rational bases.