Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book 5
Harold Edgeworth Butler, Ed.

[28] Again, when we are replying to the accuser we may sometimes set forth the whole charge, as Cicero does in the pro Scauro with reference to the death of Bostar,¹ where he virtually parodies the speech of his opponent, or we may take a number of points raised in the course of the accusation and put them together as in the pro Vareno:² “They have asserted that, when he was [p. 329] journeying with Pompulenus through a lonely stretch of country, he fell in with the slaves of Ancharius, that Pompulenus was then killed and Varenus imprisoned on the spot until such time as this man should indicate what he wished to be done with him.” Such a procedure is useful, if the sequence of facts alleged by the prosecution is incredible, and likely to lose its force by restatement. Sometimes, on the other hand, we may destroy the cumulative force of a number of statements by refuting them singly; in fact this is generally the safest course. Sometimes, again, the different portions of our reply will be independent of one another, a case which requires no illustration.