Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

These, however, I call consequent or ἀκόλουθα goodness, for instance, is consequent on wisdom: while in regard to things which merely have taken place afterwards or will take place I use the term insequent or παρεπόμενα, though I do not regard the question of terminology as important. Give them any name you please, as long as the meaning is clear and it is shown that the one depends on time, the other on the nature of things.

I have therefore no hesitation in calling the following forms of argument also consequential, although they argue from the past to the future: some however divide them into two classes, those concerned with action, as in the pro Oppio,

How could he detain against their will those whom he was unable to take to the province against their will?
and those concerned with time, as in the Verrines, [*](Verr. I. xlii. 109. The praetor on entering office on Jan. I issued an edict announcing the principles on which his rulings would be given. This edict was an interpretation of the law of Rome, and held good only during the praetor's year of office. )
If the first of January puts an end to the authority of the praetor's edict, why should the commencement of its authority not likewise date from the first of January?

Both these

v4-6 p.245
instances are of such a nature that the argument is reversible. For it is a necessary consequence that those who could not be taken to the province against their will could not be retained against their will.

So too I feel clear that we should rank as consequential arguments those derived from facts which lend each other mutual support and are by some regarded as forming a separate kind of argument, which they [*]( Ar. Rhet. II. xxiii. 3. ) call ἐκ τῶν πρὸς ἄλληλα, arguments from things mutually related, while Cicero [*](de Inv. I. xxx. 46. ) styles them arguments drawn from things to which the same line of reasoning applies; take the following example [*](ib. 47. ) :

If it is honourable for the Rhodians to let out their harbour dues, it is honourable likewise for Hermocreon to take the contract,
or
What it is honourable to learn, it is also honourable to teach.
Such also is the fine sentence of Domitius Afer,

which has the same effect, though it is not identical in form:

I accused, you condemned.
Arguments which prove the same thing from opposites are also mutually consequential; for instance, we may argue that he who says that the world was created thereby implies that it is suffering decay, since this is the property of all created things.