CHAPTER XIII. $5 Sometimes the were assigned to the boys as single sub- jects of a theme or declamation ; so the same poet speaks sarcas- tically to Hannibal, 1 I demens, of sacra. eorre per Alpes, Ut pueris placeas et declumatio Go climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool, To please the boys, and be a theme at school. See more of this matter in Kennet's Antiquities of Rome, in the secondEssay on the Roman Education. Sat. 10. CHAP. XIII.-Q` dcgdetnie or Scholastic Disputation. THE common methods in which disputes are managed in the Schools of Learning, are these, viz. I. The tutor appoints a question in some of the sciences to be debated among his students : oneof them undertakes to affirm, qr to deny the question, and to defend his assertion or negation, Mid to answer all objections against it; he is called there- spondent ; and the rest of the students in the same class, or who pursue the same science, are the opponents, who are appointed to dispute orraise objections against the proposition thus affirm- ed or denied. II. Each of the students successively in their turn becomes the respondent or the defender of that proposition, while the rest oppose it also successively in their turps. III. It is the business of the respondent to write a thesis in Latin, or short discourse of the question proposed ; and he either affirms or denies the question according to the opinion of the tutor, which is supposed to be the truth, and he reads it at the beginning of the dispute. IV. In his discourse (which is written with as great accuracy as the youth is capable of) he explains the terms of the ques- tion, frees them from all ambiguity, fixes their sense, declares the true intent and meaning of the question itself, separates it from other questions with which it may have been complicated, and distinguishes it from other questions which may happen to be a-kin to it, and then pronounces in the negative or affirmative Concerning it. V. When this is done, then in the second part of his dis- course, he gives his own strongest arguments to confirm the pro- position he has laid down, that is, to vindicate his own side of the question: but he does not usually proceed to represent the objections against it, and to solve or answer them ; for Pa
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