[31]
There are also other topics which arise
from and against the statement of the case by the
prosecution. The defence may begin by drawing
arguments from the person involved, and will at
times urge on general grounds that it is incredible
that a father has been killed by his son or that a
commander has betrayed his country to the enemy.
The answer to such arguments is easy, for we may
[p. 67]
urge that bad men are capable of every crime, as
is shown by every-day occurrences, or that the
atrocious nature of a crime is but a poor argument
against its having been committed.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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.