Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Is it, I ask you, irrelevant for one accused of bribery to set forth his parentage, his past life and the services on which he relied for success in his candidature? And if a man is indicted for extortion, will it not be to his advantage to set forth not merely his past record, but also the reasons which have made the whole province or the accuser or a witness hostile to himself?

If these are not statements of facts, neither is the first portion of Cicero's [*](V. 11.) defence of Cluentius, beginning with the words

Aulus Cluentius Habitus.

For there he says nothing about the charge

v4-6 p.59

of poisoning, but confines himself entirely to setting forth the reasons for the hostility of Cluentius' mother to her son.

There are also statements which do not set forth the facts of the case itself, but facts which are none the less relevant to the case: the speaker's purpose may be to illustrate the case by some parallel, as in the passage in the Verrines [*]( V. 3. The shepherd was crucifed because the carrying of arms was forbidden. ) about Lucius Domitius who crucified a shepherd because he admitted that he had used a hunting spear to kill the boar which he had brought him as a present;