Institutio Oratoria

Let me then give you separate examples of these classes of argument from the pages of Cicero; for where should I find better? The following passage from the pro Murena [*]( viii. 17. Sulpicius, one of Murena's accusers and an unsuccessful candidate for the consulship, had sought to depreciate Murena's birth. Cicero urges that even if Sulpicius' statements were true they would be irrelevant and cites his own case to support his argument. ) is an instance of argument from the like:

For it happened that I myself when a candidate had two patricians as competitors, the one a man of the most unscrupulous and reckless character, the other a most excellent and respectable citizen. Yet I defeated Catiline by force of merit and Galba by my

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popularity.

The pro Milone [*](iii. 7.) will give us an example of argument from the greater to the less:

They say that he who confesses to having killed a man is not fit to look upon the light of day. Where is the city in which men are such fools as to argue thus? It is Rome itself, the city whose first trial on a capital charge was that of Marcus Horatius, the bravest of men, who, though the city had not yet attained its freedom, was none the less acquitted by the assembly of the Roman people, in spite of the fact that he confessed that he had slain his sister with his own hand.

I killed, not Spurius Maelius, who by lowering the price of corn and sacrificing his private fortune fell under the suspicion of desiring to make himself king, because it seemed that he was courting popularity with the common people overmuch,

No, the man I killed (for my client would not shrink from the avowal, since his deed had saved his country) was he who committed abominable adultery even in the shrines of the gods

Arguments from unlikes present great variety, for they may turn on kind, manner, time, place, etcetera, almost every one of which Cicero employs to overthrow the previous decisions that seemed to apply to the case of Cluentius, [*](pro Cluent. xxxii. sqq. ) while he makes use of argument from contraries when lie minimises [*](ib. xlviii. 134. The accused was a knight: the retention of his horse implied that he retained his status. ) the importance of the censorial stigma by praising Scipio Africanus, who in his capacity of censor allowed one whom he openly asserted to have committed deliberate perjury to retain his horse, because no one had appeared as evidence against him, though he

A brief example of a similar argument is to be found in Virgil, [*](Aen. ii. 540. )

1. But he, whom falsely thou dost call thy father,
2. Even Achilles, in far other wise
3. Dealt with old Priam, and Priam was his foe.

Historical parallels may however sometimes be related in full, as in the pro Milone [*](pro Mil. iv. 9. ) :

When a military tribune serving in the army of Gaius Marius, to whom he was related, made an assault upon the honour of a common soldier, the latter killed him; for the virtuous youth preferred to risk his life by slaying him to suffering such dishonour. And yet the great Marius acquitted him of all crime and let him go scot free.

On the other hand in certain cases it will be sufficient merely to allude to the parallel, as Cicero does in the same speech [*](ib. iii. 8. ) :

For neither the famous Servilius Ahala nor Publius Nasica nor Lucius Opimius nor the Senate during my consulship could be cleared of serious guilt, if it were a crime to put wicked men to death.

A similar method is to be pursued in quoting from the fictions of the poets, though we must remember that they will be of less force as proofs. The same supreme authority, the great master of eloquence, shows us how we should employ such quotations.

For an example of this type will be found in the same speech [*](ib. iii. 8. The allusion is to Orestes, acquitted when tried before the Areopagus at Athens by the casting vote of Pallas Athene. ) :

And it is therefore, gentlemen of' the jury, that men of the greatest learning have

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recorded in their fictitious narratives that one who had killed his mother to avenge his father was acquitted, when the opinion of men was divided as to his guilt, not merely by the decision of a deity, but by the vote of the wisest of goddesses.

Again those fables which, although they did not originate with Aesop (for Hesiod seems to have been the first to write them), are best known by Aesop's name, are specially attractive to rude and uneducated minds, which are less suspicious than others in their reception of fictions and, when pleased, readily agree with the arguments from which their pleasure is derived. Thus Menenius Agrippa [*](See Liv. ii. 32.) is said to have reconciled the plebs to the patricians by his fable of the limbs' quarrel with the belly. Horace [*](Epis I. i. 73. )

also did not regard the employment of fables as beneath the dignity even of poetry; witness his lines that narrate

What the shrewd fox to the sick lion told.

apologues,

Similar to these is that class of proverb which may be regarded as an abridged fable and is understood allegorically:

The burden is not mine to carry,

the ox is carrying panniers.

Simile has a force not unlike that of example, more especially when drawn from things nearly equal without any admixture of metaphor, as in the following case:

Just as those who have been accustomed to receive bribes in the Campus Martius are specially hostile to those whom they suspect of having withheld the money, so in the present case the judges came into court with a strong prejudice against the

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accused.

For παραβολή, which Cicero [*](de Inv. i. 30. ) translates by

comparison,

But if those who have just come into harbour from the high seas are in the habit of showing the greatest solicitude in warning those who are on the point of leaving port of the state of the weather, the likelihood of falling in with pirates, and the nature of the coasts which they are like to visit (for it is a natural instinct that we should take a kindly interest in those who are about to face the dangers from which we have just escaped), what think you should be my attitude who am now in sight of land after a mighty tossing on the sea, towards this man who, as I clearly see, has to face the wildest weather?

Further, since similar objects often take on a different appearance when viewed from a different angle, I feel that I ought to point out that the kind of comparison which the Greeks call εἰκών, and which expresses the appearance of things and persons (as for instance in the line of Cassius [*]( Probably the epigrammatist Cassius of Parma. lanipedis =bandaged for the gout. Regius emended to planipedis, a dancer who performed barefoot. ) —

1. Who is he yonder that doth writhe his face
2. Like some old man whose feet are wrapped in wool?)

Of this kind is the saying of Cicero [*](See IV. iv. 8.) :

As our bodies can make no use of their members without a mind to direct them, so the state can make no use of its component parts, which may be compared to the sinews, blood and limbs, unless it is directed by law.

As I have already said, the following type of simile comes more readily to hand:

As oarsmen are useless without a steersman, so soldiers are useless without a general.

Consequently, it is allimportant in this connexion to consider whether the simile is really applicable. So in answering those Socratic questions which I mentioned above, [*](§ 3.) the greatest care must be taken to avoid giving an incautious answer, such as those given by the wife of Xenophon to Aspasia in the dialogue of Aeschines the Socratic: the passage is translated by Cicero [*](de Inv. I. xxxi. 51. ) as follows:

Tell me, pray, wife of Xenophon, if your

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neighbour has finer gold ornaments than you, would you prefer hers or yours?

Hers,

Well, then, if her dress and the rest of her ornaments are more valuable than yours, which would you prefer, hers or yours?

Hers,

Come, then,

if her husband is better than yours, would you prefer yours or hers?

I am aware that some writers have shown pedantic zeal in making a minute classification of similes, and have pointed out that there is lesser similitude (such as that of a monkey to a man or a statue when first blocked out to its original), a greater similitude (for which compare the proverb

As like as egg to egg

So too they distinguish between contraries: some are opposites, as night to day, some hurtful, as cold water to a fever, some contradictory, as truth to falsehood, and some negative, as things which are not hard when contrasted with things which are hard. But I cannot see that such distinctions have any real bearing on the subject under discussion.