[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?”1 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.
1 The reason according to Lactantius (Inst. Div. i. 20) was the bravery of the Spartan women in one of the Messenian wars.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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