Institutio Oratoria

There is a law to the effect that

the man who refuses to support his parents is liable to imprisonment.

A certain man fails to support his parents and none the less objects to going to prison. He advances the hypothesis that he would be exempt from such a penalty if he were a soldier, an infant. or if he were absent from home on the service of the state. Again in the case where a hero is allowed to choose his reward [*](cp. VII. v. 4. ) we might introduce the hypotheses of his desiring to make himself a tyrant or to overthrow the temples of the gods.

Such arguments are specially useful when we are arguing against the letter of the law, and are thus employed by Cicero in the pro Caecina [*]( xix. 55. Quintilian merely quotes fragments of Cicero's arguments. The sense of the passages omitted is supplied in brackets. The interdict of the praetor had ordered Caecina's restoration. His adversary is represented by Cicero as attempting to evade compliance by verbal quibbles. ) :

[The interdict contains the words,] ' whence you or your household or your agent had driven him.' If your steward alone had driven me out, [it would not, I suppose, be your household but a member of your household that had driven me out]. . . . If indeed you owned no slave except the one who drove me out, [you would cry, 'If I possess a household at all, I admit that my household drove you out'].

Many other examples might be quoted from the same work.

But fictitious suppositions are also exceedingly useful when we are concerned with the quality of an act [*](pro Mur —. xxxix. 83. Cicero argues that Murena's election as consul is necessary to save the state from Catiline. If the jury now condemn him, they will be doing exactly what Catiline and his accomplices, now in arms in Etruria, would do if they could try him. ) :

If

v4-6 p.257

Catiline could try this case assisted by a jury composed of those scoundrels whom he led out with him he would condemn Lucius Murena.

It is useful also for amplification [*](Phil. II. xxv. 63. This = vomiting. Cicero contimes who would not have thought it disgraceful. ) :

If this had happened to you during dinner in the midst of your deep potations

; or again, [*]( Probably an allusion to Cat. i. 7, where Cicero makes the state reproach Catiline for his conduct. )

If the state could speak.