Book 5
10.98
Such arguments are specially useful when we are arguing against the letter of the law, and are thus employed by Cicero in the pro Caecina xix. 55. Quintilian merely quotes fragments of Cicero's arguments. The sense of the passages omitted is supplied in brackets. The interdict of the praetor had ordered Caecina's restoration. His adversary is represented by Cicero as attempting to evade compliance by verbal quibbles. : [The interdict contains the words,] ' whence you or your household or your agent had driven him.' If your steward alone had driven me out, [it would not, I suppose, be your household but a member of your household that had driven me out]. . . . If indeed you owned no slave except the one who drove me out, [you would cry, 'If I possess a household at all, I admit that my household drove you out']. Many other examples might be quoted from the same work.
