Kitap 7
9.12
Where it is doubtful to what a word or phrase refers, and the word or phrase itself is ambiguous, we shall have to alter several words, as, for example, in the sentence, My heir shall be bound to give him all his own property, where his own is ambiguous. Cicero commits the same fault when he says of Gaius Fannius, Brut. xxvi. 101. The sentence continues, (an act of which Laelius said by way of excuse that he had given the augurship not to his younger son-in-law, but to his elder daughter), Fannius, I say, despite his lack of affection for Laelius, in obedience to his instructions attended the lectures of Panaetius. He following the instructions of his father-in-law, for whom, because he had not been elected to the college of augurs, he had no great affection, especially as he had given Quintus Scaevola, the younger of his sons-in-law, the preference over himself. . For over himself may refer either to his father-in-law or to Fannius.
9.13
Again, another source of ambiguity arises from leaving it doubtful in a written document whether a syllable is long or short. Cato, for example, means one thing in the nominative when its second syllable is short, and another in the dative or ablative when the same syllable is long. sc. of the adjective catus, shrewd. There are also a number of other forms of ambiguity which it is unnecessary for me to describe at length.
