Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Similarly it is also usual to give the names of signs to frequently observed phenomena, such as prognostics of the weather which we may illustrate by the Vergilian

For wind turns Phoebe's face to ruddy gold
Verg. G. i. 431.

and

The crow
With full voice, good-for-naught, invites the rain.
ib. i. 388.

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If these phenomena are caused by the state of the atmosphere, such an appellation is correct enough.

For if tile moon turns red owing to the wind, her hue is certainly a sign of wind. And if, as the same poet infers, [*]( Verg. G. i. 422. ) the condensation and rarification of the atmosphere causes that

concert of bird-voices

of which he speaks, we may agree in regarding it as a sign. We may further note that great things are sometimes indicated by trivial signs, witness the Vergilian crow; that trivial events should be indicated by signs of greater importance is of course no matter for wonder.

I now turn to arguments, the name under which we comprise the ἐνθυμήματα, ἐπιχειρήματα, and ἀποδείξεις of the Greeks, terms which, in spite of their difference, have much the same meaning. For the enthymeme (which we translate by commentun or commentatio, there being no alternative, though we should be wiser to use the Greek name) has three meanings: firstly it means anything conceived in the mind (this is not however the sense of which I am now speaking);

secondly it signifies a proposition with a reason, and thirdly a conclusion of an argument drawn either from denial of consequents or from incompatibles [*](v. viii. 5; xiv. 2. n.) ; although there is some controversy on this point. For there are some who style a conclusion from consequents an epicheireme, while it will be found that the majority hold the view that an epicheireme is a conclusion from incompatibles: [*](See v. xiv. 2, VIII. v. 9.) wherefore Cornificius styles it a contrarium or argument from contraries. Some again call it a rhetorical

syllogism, others an incomplete syllogism, because its parts are not so clearly defined or of the same number as those of the regular syllogism, since such

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precision is not specially required by the orator. Valgius [*](See III. i. 18. A rhetorician of the reign of Augustus.) translates ἐπιχείρημα by aggressio,

that is an attempt. It would however, in my opinion, be truer to say that it is not our handling of the subject, but the thing itself which we attempt which should be called an ἐπιχείρημα, that is to say the argument by which we try to prove something and which, even if it has not yet been stated in so many words, has been clearly conceived by the mind.

Others regard it not as an attempted or imperfect proof, but a complete proof, falling under the most special [*]( The last or lowest species. p. § 56 and VII. i. 23. ) species of proof; consequently, according to its proper and most generally received appellation it must be understood in the sense of a definite conception of some thought consisting of at least three parts. [*](i.e. the major and minor premisses and the conclusion. See v. xiv. 6 sqq. ) Some call an ἐπιχείρημα a reason,