Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

Similarly all the topics of demonstrative [*]( See III. iv. 12 sqq. ) oratory involve a qualitative basis.

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The facts are admitted, and the question turns on their quality, the dispute being entirely concerned with rewards or penalties or their quantity. The case is therefore of two kinds, simple or comparative, the former dealing with what is just, the latter with what is juster, or most just. When the point for decision is the penalty to be inflicted, the duty of the pleader will be to defend, extenuate or excuse the act on which the charge is based, or even, according to some, to plead for mercy.

By far the strongest line that can be taken in defence is to assert that the act which forms the subject of the charge is actually honourable. A man is disinherited because he went on military service, stood for office or married without his father's consent. We defend this act. This form of defence is called κατ᾽ ἀντίληψιν by the followers of Hermagoras, that is, defence by objection, the term being used with reference to the purport of the defendant's plea. [*](ἀντίληψις is the technical term for this form of defence which turns not on the facts, but on the justice of the case. The meaning of ad intellectum id nomen referentes is obscure. If the words are correct (and no satisfactory correction seems possible), their meaning must be that the defence turns not on the act, but on its significance and equity. If any change is made in the text, the simplest course is to delete the words as a gloss which has crept into the text. ) I can find no exact Latin translation of the term; we call it an absolute defence. But in such cases the question is concerned with the justice or injustice of the act alone.

Justice is either natural or conventional. Natural justice is found in actions of inherent worth.

Under this head come the virtues of piety, loyalty, self-control and the like. To these some add the rendering of like for like. But this view must not be adopted without consideration: for to retaliate, or meet violence with violence on the one hand, does not imply injustice on the part of the aggressor, while on the other hand it does not follow that the first act was just merely because the two acts were alike. In cases where there is justice on both sides, the

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two parties must both come under the same law and the same conditions, and it would not perhaps be untrue to say that things can never be spoken of as like if there is any point in which they are dissimilar. Convention, on the other hand, is to be found in laws, customs, legal precedents and agreements.

There is another form of defence by which we defend an act in itself indefensible by arguments drawn from without. [*](i. e. from motives derived from facts lying outside the actual case. ) This the Greeks call κατ᾽ ἀντίθεσιν by opposition. Here again there is no Latin equivalent, since we call it defence by assumption.

The strongest line to take in this form of defence is to defend the act forming the subject of the charge by appealing to its motive. An example of this is provided by the defence put forward on behalf of Orestes, Horatius or Milo. The term ἀντέγκλημα, or counter-accusation, is employed when our defence consists entirely in accusing the person whom our opponents are seeking to vindicate.

He was killed, but he was a robber; he was blinded, but he was a ravisher.