QUINTILIAN ΟΚ ΤΗΝ EDUCATION OF AN ORATOR. BOOK VII. INTRODUCTION. Arrangement necessary to be studied, § 1-3. But no general ruler can be given with respect to it, 4. 1. OF Invention, I think, enough has been said; for I have not only treated of the mode of informing judges, but have touched on the art of exciting their feelings. But as it is not enough for those who are erecting edifices, to collect stones and materials, and other things useful for the architect, unless the hand of the workman be also applied to the disposition and collocation of them, so, in speaking, however abundant be the quantity of matter, it will form but a confused mass and heap, unless similar arrangement bind it together, disposed in regular order, and with its several parts connected one with another. 2. It is therefore not without reason that arrangement is considered the second of the five parts* of oratory; for though all the limbs of a statue be cast, it is not a statue until they are united; and if, in our own bodies, or those of any other animals, we were to displace or alter the position of any part, they would, though they had the same number of parts, be but monsters. Even our joints, if but in the least degree dislocated, lose their whole use and power of action; and disorder in an army is an impediment to its efficiency. 3. Nor do those appear to be in the wrong, who think that the system of the world is maintained by order, and that, if its order were broken, it would cease to exist as a whole. Compare vi. 4, 1. Spalding. See note on iii. 1, 1. B So speech, if deficient in that quality, must necessarily be confused, and float like a ship without a helm; it can have no coherence; it must exhibit many repetitions, and many omissions; and, like a traveller wandering by night in unknown regions, must, as having no stated course or object, be guided by chance rather than design. 4. The whole of this book, therefore, shall be devoted to arrangement, a quality, which, if it could be taught by rules adapted to every kind of subject, would not have fallen to the lot of so small a number of speakers. But as the forms of causes have been, and will ever be, infinite in variety, and as no one cause, during so many ages, has been found in all respects similar to another, the pleader must exercise his sagacity, his discernment, his invention, and his judgment, and must ask counsel from himself. Yet I do not deny that there are some things that may be taught by precept, and of these I shall not fail to treat. CHAPTER I. Definition of arrangement, § 1. Must be varied according to the nature of causes, 2, 3. How Quintilian used to study and contemplate causes, 4-9. The best order for arguments, 10-12. How we may reply to a single accusation, 13-15. Or to several, 16-18. How we may omit or neglect some points, 19-22. Further remarks on the consideration of a cause, 23-25. We must pro ceed by degrees to the most important points, 26-28. Quintilian used to increase the points in his own favour by division, 29-33. Invention assisted by division, 34-36. Which party should speak first, is not a matter for great consideration, 37-39. How the more intrinsic points in a cause are to be discovered is shown by a subject for declamation in the schools, 40-64. 1. LET division, then, as I signified above,* be the distribution of a number of things into its component parts; partition, the regular distribution of parts into their members, and a just disposition connecting those that follow with those that precede; and arrangement a due distribution of things and their parts in their proper places. 2 But let us remember that * V. 10, 63. arrangement is often altered to suit the interest of a cause and that the same question is not always discussed first by both parties; a point of which, to omit other examples, Demosthenes and Eschines may afford us an instance, who, in the trial concerning Ctesiphon, adopt a very different order, as the accuser commences with the question of law, on wish he thought himself the stronger, while the defendant introduces all other particulars, or almost all, before touching on the question of law, in order to prepare the judges for consideria the point of legality at the conclusion. 3. For it may be to the interest of one side to state one point first, and of the other to state another; else the pleading would always be conducted at the pleasure of the prosecutor; and, in a case of mutual accusation, when each party defends himself before he accuses his adversary, the order of everything on either side must be different.* I shall therefore set forth the method which I myself have followed, and which I have adopted partly from the rules of others, and partly from my own reasoning; nor have I ever made any mystery of it. 4. It was my great care, in forensic pleadings, to ascertain, in the first place, all the points that were concerned in any cause;† as in the schools there are certain particulars, and but few, that are laid down previous to the declamation; the Greeks call them léμara. Cicero § proposita. When I had placed these, as it were, full in my view, I contemplated the cause not less with reference to the opposite side than to my own. 5. First, then, (what is not difficult to be ascertained, but is above all to be regarded,) I settled what each party wished to establish, and then by what means, in the following way. I considered what the prosecutor would state first; this would either be an admitted, or a contested point. If it were admitted, the question could not lie in it. 6. I passed therefore to the answer of the defendant, and considered it in the same way. Sometimes, too, what was elicited from thence was admitted. * In anticategoria, that is, recrimination and mutual accusation, the arrangement on each side is different; for instance, if you accuse me of homicide, and I accuse you of sacrilege, I should speak first of homicide, in order to clear myself, while you would speak first of sacrilege. Turnebus. See iii. 10, 4. + Comp. vi. 4, 8; iv. 2, 28. ‡ IV. 2, 28. § Topic. c. 21. But as soon as there began to be any disagreement, the question arose. The process was of this nature: You killed a man; I did kill him; the fact is admitted; I pass on. 7. The defendant ought to give a reason why he killed him. It is lawful, he may say, to kill an adulterer with an adulteress. It is admitted that there is such a law. We may then proceed to a third point, about which there may be a dispute. They were not guilty of adultery; they were. Hence arises the question. It is a controversy about fact, a matter of conjecture. 8. Sometimes, however, a third point is admitted, that they were guilty of adultery. But, the accuser may say, it was not lawful for you to kill them; for you were an exile, or infamous, There is, then, a question about law. But if, when the prosecutor says at first, You have killed, the defendant reply, I have not killed, the dispute commences at once. It is thus that we must ascertain when the controversy begins; and we must consider what forms the first question.* 9. The accusation may be simple: Rabirius killed Saturninus;t or complex: Lucius Varenus has incurred the penalty of the law respecting assassins; for he is guilty of killing Caius Varenus, of wounding Cneius, and also of killing Salarius ;+ since there will thus be three distinct propositions. The same may be said of civil suits.§ But out of a complex accusation may arise several questions and states,|| if the accused denies one point, justifies another, and endeavours to set aside another by taking exception ¶ at the form of process. In this case the accuser must consider carefully what he ought to refute, and in what parts of his speech. 10. As to what concerns the accuser, I do not altogether dissent from Celsus, who, doubtless following Cicero, persists in maintaining somewhat too positively, on this head, that strong arguments should be advanced in the first place, the strongest * Considerari debet, quæ primam quæstionem facit.] These words are evidently corrupt. Spalding proposes quæ prima quæstionum fuerit, or quam primam quæstionem facias. + V. 7, 20. See v. 13, 28; and the fragments of the speech Pro Vareno in Ernesti. The words commisit and cadit in the text, of which the sense is not very clear, I have translated in conformity with the notions of Spalding. De petitionibus.] As distinguished from criminal prosecutions. ■ III. 6, 1. III. 6, 23. of all in the last, and the weaker in the middle; because the judge requires to be moved at the beginning, and pressed forcibly at the end. 11. But on the side of the accused, the strongest argument against him must first be attacked, lest the judge, looking to that point, should regard with too little favour our establishment of other points. Yet this order may occasionally be changed, if the lighter points be evidently false, and the refutation of the heaviest charge extremely difficult; so that, after thus detracting from the credit of the accusers, we may proceed to the last point, when the judge is ready to suppose that all the charges may be false. It will be necessary, however, to make some preliminary remarks, in which a reason may be given for putting off the consideration of the principal charge, and a refutation of it may be promised, in order that we may not seem to fear that which we do not at once overthrow. 12. Attacks on the past life of the accused must generally be refuted first, that the judge may be inclined to hear with favour the question on which he is to give a decision. But Cicero, in his speech for Varenus, has delayed the consideration of such charges to the conclusion, regarding, not what is expedient generally, but what was expedient on that occasion. 13. When the accusation is simple, we must consider whether we will give our answer in one proposition or in several. If in one, whether we build our case on fact, or on written law.* If on fact, whether what is charged against us is to be denied or justified. If on written law, on what point of law the question stands, and whether it regards the letter or the intention. 14. This we shall discover, if we ascertain what law it is that gives rise to the suit, that is, on what the point for decision rests. In the exercises of the schools, some laws are laid down merely to connect a series of cir cumstances in a case: thus, Let a father, who recognizes a son that he has exposed, take him back on paying for his sub Quintilian here looks to the primary division of general states, according to which some are de re, and are called status rationales; others de scripto, and are called legales. Capperonier. See b. iii. c. 6. † Quædam.] We must understand leges, as is evident from the example that follows. Capperonier. This law we find in Seneca the Rhetorician, pp. 286, 479; and in the 278th of the Declamations that go under the name of Quintilian. Spalding. |