Institutio Oratoria

There are other conclusions which, as I have said, are not necessary, whether as regards both cause and effect or only one of the two. For instance,

the sun colours the skin, but not

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everyone that is coloured receives that colour from the sun; a journey makes the traveller dusty, but every journey does not produce dust, nor is everyone that is dusty just come from a journey.

As examples of necessary conclusions on the other hand I may cite the following:

If wisdom makes a man good, a good man must needs be wise

; and again,

It is the part of a good man to act honourably, of a bad man to act dishonourably,

or

Those who act honourably are considered good, those who act dishonourably are considered bad men.

In these cases the conclusion is correct. On the other hand,

though exercise generally makes the body robust, not everyone who is robust is given to exercise, nor is everyone that is addicted to exercise robust. Nor again, because courage prevents our fearing death, is every man who has no fear of death to be regarded as a brave man; nor is the sun useless to man because it sometimes gives him a headache.

Arguments such as the following belong in the main to the hortative department of oratory:—

Virtue brings renown, therefore it should be pursued; but the pursuit of pleasure brings ill-repute, therefore it should be shunned.

But the warning that we should not necessarily search for the originating cause is just: an example of such error is provided by the speech of Medea [*]( The opening of Ennius' translation of the Medea of Euripides. ) beginning

Ah! would that never there in Pelion's grove,

as though her misery or guilt were due to the fact that there

1. The beams of fir had fallen to the ground

   ;

or I might cite the words addressed by Philoctetes to Paris, [*]( From the Philoctetes of Accius, Ribbeck fr. 178. )

1. Hadst thou been other than thou art, then I
2. Had ne'er been plunged in woe.

By tracing back causes on lines such as these we may arrive anywhere.