[88]
Points of law may be
proved in a similar manner; from something greater,
as in the sentence “If it is lawful to kill an
adulterer, it is lawful to scourge him”; from something less, “If it is lawful to kill a man attempting
theft by night, how much more lawful is it to kill
one who attempts robbery with violence”; from
something equal, “The penalty which is just in the
case of parricide is also just in the case of matricide.” In all these cases we follow the syllogistic
method.1
1 See III. vi. 15, 43, 88.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.