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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
[p. 161]
property,” where “his own” is ambiguous. Cicero
commits the same fault when he says of Gaius
Fannius,1 “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.
1 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.”
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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