[26]
These three questions, then, served the
purpose of an exordium, since they all of them were
designed to prepare the minds of the judges.
Again in the pro Vareno Cicero delayed his
statement of facts until he had first rebutted
certain allegations put forward by the prosecution.
This may be done with advantage whenever we
have not merely to rebut the charge, but to turn
the tables on our opponents: thus after first
rebutting the charge, we make our statement of
facts the opening of an incrimination of the other
party just as in actual fighting we are most
[p. 65]
concerned to parry our adversary's blows before
we strike him ourselves.
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.