Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

There is moreover great variety in definitions. For instance, persons will give different verbal expression to

v7-9 p.91

things about which they are really in agreement: thus rhetoric is defined as the science of speaking well, as the science of correct conception or correct expression of what we have to say, as the science of speading in accordance with the excellence of an orator and again of speaking to the purpose. And we must take care to discover how it is that definitions, identical in meaning, differ in the form in which they are expressed. However, this is a subject for discussion and not for a quarrel.

Definition is sometimes required to explain rare or obscure words such as clarigatio [*](A formal demand for redress under threat of war.) or erctum citum, [*](An undivided inheritance.) or again to explain familiar words such as penus [*](Store of provisions.) or litus. [*]( Shore, see v. xiv. 34, where its derivation is explained as qua fiuctus eludit. ) This variety in definition has caused some writers to include it under conjecture, others under quality and others again under legal questions.