Institutio Oratoria

But as it is not in itself sufficient to know that all proofs are drawn either from persons or things, because each of these groups is subdivided into a number of different heads so he who has learned that arguments must be drawn from antecedent, contemporary or subsequent facts will not be sufficiently instructed in the knowledge of the method of handling arguments to understand what arguments are to be drawn from the circumstances of each particular case;

especially as the majority of proofs are to be found in the special circumstances of individual cases and have

This type of argument may reasonably be described as drawn from circumstances, there being no other word to express the Greek περίστασις or from those things which are peculiar to any given case. For instance, in the case of the priest who having committed adultery desired to save his own life by means of the law [*]( This law and those which follow are imaginary laws invented for the purposes of the schools of rhetoric. ) which gave him the power of saving one life, the appropriate argument to employ against him would run as follows:

You would save more than one guilty person, since, if you were discharged, it would not be lawful to put the adulteress to death.

Again, take the case falling under the law which lays down that bankers may pay only half of what they owe, while permitted to recover the whole of what they are owed. One banker requires payment of the whole sum owed him by another banker. The appropriate argument supplied by the subject to the creditor is that there was special reason for the insertion of the clause [*]( The argument is far from clear. The case assumes that by a species of moratorium a banker may be released from payment of his debts in full to ordinary creditors. This moratorium does not however apparently apply to debts contracted between banker and banker. ) sanctioning the recovery of the whole of a debt by a banker, since there was no need of such a law as against others, inasmuch as all have the right to recover the whole of a debt from any save a banker.