Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

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.
v4-6 p.249
By tracing back causes on lines such as these we may arrive anywhere.

But for the fact that Cicero [*](Top. iii. 12. ) has done so, I should regard it as absurd to add to these what is styled the conjugate argument, such as

Those who perform a just act, act justly,
a self-evident fact requiring no proof; or again,
Every man has a common right to send his cattle to graze in a common pasture.

Some call these arguments derived from causes or efficients by the Greek name ἐκβάσεις that is, results; for in such cases the only point considered is how one thing results from another. Those arguments which prove the lesser from the greater or the greater from the less or equals from equals are styled apposite or comparative.