Aquillius, then, my colleague and intimate friend, was accustomed, when there was any discussion about shores, (all of which you lawyers insist upon it are public,) to define them to men who asked to whom that which was shore belonged, in this way:  “Wherever the waves dashed;” that is, as if a man were to define youth as the flower of a man’s age, or old age as the setting of life.  Using a metaphor, he departs from the words proper to the matter in hand and to his own art.  This is enough as to definition.  Let us now consider the other points.

VIII.  But we must employ partition in such a manner as to omit no part whatever.  As if you wish to partition guardianship, you would act ignorantly if you were to omit any kind.  But if you were partitioning off the different formulas of stipulations or judicial decisions, then it is not a fault to omit something in a matter which is of boundless extent.  But in division it is a fault; for there is a settled number of species which are subordinate to each genus.  The distribution of the parts is often more interminable still, like the drawing streams from a fountain.  Therefore in the art of an orator, when the genus of a question is once laid down, the number of its species is added absolutely; but when rules are given concerning the embellishments of words and sentences, which are called [Greek:  schaemata], the case is different; for the circumstances are more infinite:  so that it may be understood from this also what the difference is which we assert to exist between partition and division.  For although the words appear nearly equivalent to one another still, because the things are different, the expressions are also established as not synonymous to one another.

Many arguments are also derived from observation, and that is when they are deduced from the meaning of a word, which the Greeks call [Greek:  etumologia]; or as we might translate it, word for word, veriloquium.  But we, while avoiding the novel appearance of a word which is not very suitable, call this kind of argument notatio, because words are the notes by which we distinguish things.  And therefore Aristotle calls the same source of argument [Greek:  sunbolou], which is equivalent to the Latin nota.  But when it is known what is meant we need not be so particular about the name.  In a discussion then, many arguments are derived from words by means of observation; as when the question is asked, what is a postliminium—­(I do not mean what are the objects to which this word applies, for that would be division, which is something of this sort:  “Postliminium applies to a man, a ship, a mule with panniers, a horse, a mare who is accustomed to be bridled")—­but when the meaning of the word itself, postliminium, is asked, and when the word itself is observed.  And in this our countryman, Servius, as it seems, thinks that there is nothing to be observed except post, and he insists upon it that liminium is a mere extension of the word; as in finitimus, legitimus, ceditimus, timus has no more meaning than tullius has in meditullius.