INVENTION OR DISCOVERY OF ARGUMENTS
In the majority of handbooks, the first branch of rhetoric discussed is invention, that is the finding of arguments and approaches appropriate to the matter at hand. We have already encountered one approach to invention in Aristotle’s discussion of enthymemes and paradigms. Other writers, without rejecting Aristotelian teaching, developed an approach based on the identification of the critical or decisive issue in a case and the development of a certain stance towards it. The passage presented here, from the anonymous Rhetoric to Herennius, is fairly typical in its analysis of issues and stances. Once the speaker, following the guidelines presented, identifies the key point of contention and adopts a stance towards it, he can develop appropriate arguments of a positive or negative sort. The lists of issues, sub-issues and stances provide a kind of scaffolding for the construction of a case.
This passage, as well as others from the Rhetoric to Herennius, is also of interest for the examples presented by the author. Some are of the fictional sort that would have been used in preliminary school exercises, but others closely track real-life cases in the Roman courts of the late republic.