Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
It will also be found useful when we are speaking of what is likely to happen to refer to historical parallels: for instance if the orator asserts that Dionysius is asking for a bodyguard that with their armed assistance he may establish himself as tyrant, he may
But while examples may at times, as in the last instance, apply in their entirety, at times we shall argue from the greater to the less or from the less to the greater.
Cities have been overthrown by the violation of the marriage bond. What punishment then will meet the case of adultery?
Fluteplayers have been recalled by the state to the city which they had left. How much more then is it just that leading citizens who have rendered good service to their country should be recalled from that exile to which they have been driven by envy.[*]( cp. Liv. ix. 30. The flute-players employed in public worship migrated to Tibur because deprived of an oldestablished privilege, but were brought back by stratagem, after their hosts had made them drunk. )
Arguments from unlikes are most useful in exhortation. Courage is more remarkable in a woman than in a man. Therefore, if we wish to kindle someone's ambition to the performance of heroic deeds, we shall find that parallels drawn from the cases of Horatius and Torquatus will carry less weight than that of the woman by whose hand Pyrrhus was slain, and if we wish to urge a man to meet death, the cases of Cato and Scipio will carry less weight than that of Lucretia. These are however arguments from the greater to the less.