Kitap 2
4.25
Other theses too belong entirely to the deliberative class of oratory, as for instance the questions as to Whether marriage is desirable or Whether a public career is a proper object of ambition. Put such discussions into the mouths of specific persons and they become deliberative declamations at once.
4.26
My own teachers used to prepare us for conjectural cases by a form of exercise which was at once useful and attractive: they made us discuss and develop questions such as Why in Sparta is Venus represented as wearing armour? The reason according to Lactantius ( Inst. Div. i. 20) was the bravery of the Spartan women in one of the Messenian wars. or Why is Cupid believed to be a winged boy armed with arrows and a torch? and the like. In these exercises our aim was to discover the intention implied, a question which frequently occurs in controversial declamations. Such themes may perhaps be regarded as a kind of chria or moral essay.
4.27
That certain topics such as the question as to whether we should always believe a witness or whether we should rely on circumstantial evidence, are part and parcel of actual forensic pleading is so obvious that certain speakers, men too who have held civil office with no small distinction, have written out passages dealing with such themes, committed them to memory and kept them ready for immediate use, with a view to employing them when occasion arose as a species of ornament to be inserted into their extempore speeches.
