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“
[2]
a poisoner shall be liable to capital punishment. A
wife gave her husband a love-potion to cure him of
his habit of beating her. She also divorced him.
On being asked by her relatives to return to him,
she refused. The husband hung himself. The
woman is accused of poisoning.” The strongest
line for the accuser to take will be to assert that
the love-potion was a poison. This involves definition.
If it proves weak, we shall have recourse to the
syllogism, to which we shall proceed after virtually
[p. 151]
dropping our previous argument, and which we shall
employ to decide the question whether she does not
deserve to be punished for administering the lovepotion no less than if she had caused her husband's
death by poison.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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