Institutio Oratoria

For example, a woman who is delivered of a child must have had intercourse with a man, and the reference is to the past. When there is a high wind at sea, there must be waves, and the reference is to the present. When a man has received a wound in the heart, he is bound to die, and the reference is to the future. Nor again can there be a harvest where no seed has been sown, nor can a man be at Rome when he is at Athens, nor have been wounded by a sword when he has no scar. Some have the same force when reversed:

a man who breathes is alive, and a man who is alive breathes. Some again cannot be reversed: because he who walks moves it does not follow that he who moves walks.

So too a woman, who has not been delivered of a child, may have had intercourse with a man, there may be waves without a high wind, and a man may die without having received a wound in the heart. Similarly seed may be sown without a harvest resulting, a man, who was never at Athens, may

There are other indications or εἰκότα, that is probabilities, as the Greeks call them, which do not involve a necessary conclusion. These may not be sufficient in themselves to remove doubt, but may yet be of the greatest value when taken in conjunction with other indications.

The Latin equivalent of the Greek σημεῖον is signum, a sign, though some have called it indicium, an indication, or vestigium, a trace. Such signs or indications enable us to infer that something else has happened; blood for instance may lead us to infer that a murder has taken place. But bloodstains on a garment may be the result of the slaying of a victim at a sacrifice or of bleeding at the nose. Everyone who has a bloodstain on his clothes is not necessarily a murderer.

But although such an indication may not amount to proof in itself, yet it may be produced as evidence in conjunction with other indications, such for instance as the fact that the man with the bloodstain was the enemy of the murdered man, had threatened him previously or was in the same place with him. Add the indication in question to these, and what was previously only a suspicion may become a certainty.

On the other hand there are indications which may be made to serve either party, such as livid spots, swellings which may be regarded as symptoms either of poisoning or of bad health, or a wound in the breast which may be treated as a proof of murder or of suicide. The force of such indications depends on the amount of extraneous support which they receive.

Hermagoras would include among such indications as do not involve a necessary conclusion, an

Atalanta cannot be a virgin, as she has been roaming the woods in the company of young men.