Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
A simple cause, however, although it may be defended in various ways, cannot have more than one point on which a decision has to be given, and consequently the basis of the cause will be that point which the orator sees to be the most important for him to make and on which the judge sees that he must fix all his attention. For it is on this that the cause will stand or fall. On the other hand questions may have more bases than one. [*](See § 21.)
A brief example will show what I mean. When the accused says
Admitting that I did it, I was right to do it,he makes the basis one of quality; but when he adds
but I did not do it,he introduces an element of conjecture. [*]( See § 30 aqq. ) But denial of the facts is always the stronger line of defence, and therefore I conceive the basis to reside in that which I should say, if I were confined to one single line of argument.
We are right therefore in speaking of the first conflict of causes in contradistinction to the conflict of questions. For instance in the first portion of his speech on behalf of Rabirius Postumus Cicero contends that the action cannot lie against a Roman knight, while in the second he asserts that no money ever came into his client's hands. Still I should say that the basis was to be found in the latter as being the stronger of the two.
Again in the case of Milo I do not consider that the conflict is raised by the opening questions, but only when the orator devotes all his powers to prove that Clodius lay in wait for Milo and was therefore rightly killed. The point on which above all the orator must make up his mind, even although he may be going to