Kitap 6
3
Later on, Tiro quotes the following words from the same speech: v 3, Jordan. Shall we, then, of a sudden abandon these great services given and received and this strong friendship? Shall we be the first to do what we say they merely wished to do? This, says Tiro, is a worthless and faulty argument. An enthymeme in logic was an argument consisting of two propositions, the antecedent and its consequence. For it might be replied: 'Certainly we shall anticipate them, for if we do not, we shall be caught unawares and must fall into the snares against which we failed to guard in advance.' Lucilius, he says, justly criticizes 1169, Marx. the poet Euripides for this reason, that when king Polyphontes declared that he had killed his brother, because his brother had previously planned to slay him, Meropa, his brother's wife, confuted the king with these words Fr. 451, Nauck2. : If, as you say, my husband planned your death, You too should only plan, till that time came. But that, says Tiro, is altogether full of absurdity, to wish to do something, and yet have the design and purpose of never doing what you wish to do. But, as a matter of fact, Tiro failed to observe that the reason for taking precautions is not the same in all cases, and that the occupations and actions of human life, and the obligations of anticipation or postponement or even of taking vengeance or precautions, are not like a combat of gladiators. For to a gladiator ready to fight the fortune of battle offers the alternative, either to kill, if he should conquer, or to die, if he should yield. But the life of men in general is not restricted by such unfair or inevitable necessities that one must be first to commit an injury in order to avoid suffering injury. In fact, such conduct was so alien to the humanity of the Roman people that they often forbore to avenge the wrongs inflicted upon them.
