Institutio Oratoria

Let us pursue the matter further and see if we can discover any additional arguments. How is that to be done? I am deliberately imitating the actual train of thought of one

who is engaged in such an enquiry with a view to showing how such enquiry should be conducted. I shall therefore put aside the more showy kind of composition, and concern myself solely with such as may be of real profit to the student. So far we have derived all our questions from the character of the claimant. But why should we not make some enquiries into the character of the father? Does not the law say that whoever fails to appear for his father is to be disinherited?