Institutio Oratoria

With regard to rewards, there are two questions which confront us: namely, whether the claimant is

deserving of any reward, and, if so, whether he deserves so great a reward. If there are two claimants, we have to decide which is the more worthy of the two; if there are a number, who is the most worthy. The treatment of these questions turns on the kind of merit possessed by the claimants. And we must consider not merely the act (whether it has merely to be stated or has to be compared with the acts of others), but the person of the claimant as well. For it makes a great difference whether a tyrannicide be young or old, man or woman, a stranger or a connexion.