[27]
Cause, under which
heading come a large number of disputes, whenever
a fact is not denied, but the defence pleads that the
act was just and reasonable. τρόπος or manner, which
is involved when a thing is said to have been done in
one way when it might have been done in another:
under this category come cases of such as that of the
adulterer who is scourged with thongs or starved to
death.1 Opportunity for action, the meaning of which
is too obvious to need explanation or illustration:
the Greeks however call it ἔργων ἀφορμαί
1 An adulterer caught flagrante delicto might be killed by the husband or beaten. But to starve him to death in cold blood would be illegal.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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