Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

As regards facts falling within the present, if they can be detected by the eye without any reference to their logical antecedents being required, there will be no need of conjecture: let us suppose, for instance, that the Lacedaemonians are enquiring whether the Athenians are erecting fortifications. But although conjecture may seem entirely foreign to this class of question, there are cases in which it it necessary, as in questions of personal identity, which may be illustrated by the action brought against the heirs of Urbinia, [*](cv. IV. i. 11 and VII. ii. 26. ) where the question was whether the man who claimed the property as being the son of the deceased, was Figulus or Sosipater.

In this case the actual person was before the

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eyes of the court, so that there could be no question whether he existed (as there is, for instance, when we ask whether there exists any land beyond the Ocean) [*](cp. viii. 16. ) nor what he was nor of what kind. The question was simply, who he was. But this kind of dispute also depends on past time. The problem is whether this man Clusinius Figulus was born of Urbinia. Such disputes have arisen even in our own day, indeed I myself have pleaded in such. On the other hand,

conjecture as to intention is obviously concerned with all three times. We ask with what purpose Ligarius went to Africa, with what purpose Pyrrhus is asking for a treaty, and how Caesar will take it if Ptolemy kills Pompey. [*](cp. III. viii. 56. ) We may also employ conjecture to enquire into quality in questions dealing with size, species and number, such as whether the sun is greater than the earth, whether the moon is spherical, flat or conical, whether there is one universe or several, or,

to go outside these physical speculations, whether the Trojan or the Peloponnesian war was the greatest, what was the nature of the shield of Achilles, or whether there was more than one Hercules. In forensic cases, however, which consist of accusation and defence, there is one kind of conjecture by which we enquire both about an act and about its author. This sometimes treats the two questions together, as, for example, when both the act and the identity of the author are denied, and sometimes separately, as when the first enquiry, whether the act was committed, is followed by a second, where, the act being admitted, the question is by whom it was committed.