Cornelii Valerii Ultraiectini In universam benedicendi [sic] rationem tabula, summam artis rhetoricae complectens

nothing more useful appears to have been produced in writing. And to these precepts concerning partition, this must be added, that each part should be carried out in the order in which it was proposed in the partition.

Concerning contention or the proof of the cause.

Contention or argumentation encompasses confirmation and confutation. In confirming we wish to prove our own: in refuting we wish to disprove the contrary. Cic. in Partit.

We establish the fourth part of the speech, and the most important one, for the sake of which those earlier ones were handed down, as the Contention or proof, which contains the discussion of the entire question. It consists of confirmation and confutation or refutation: the former is valid for proving, the latter for refuting; the former creates faith in the cause by arguing, the latter dissolves the arguments of the adversaries which were either raised or can be raised, and it uses the same source of invention as the confirmation. The cause is proved by arguments: these are drawn from places. The places of the dialecticians are those from which the orator borrows when he teaches. Truly, when it is to be achieved by him, not only to teach, which is the property of the dialecticians, but also to delight and move, the confirmation of orators is more illustrious and adorned than that barren argumentation of the dialecticians, to which, nevertheless, rhetoricians attribute all the strength of speech, if they wish to prove or refute anything with arguments. Hence have proceeded those precepts of rhetoricians concerning argumentation, who handed down that the shortest reasoning consists of three parts, which is the property of the dialecticians; the longest of five, the mediocre of four. They number five parts in this order: the proposition, that which is assumed to prove; soon the reason, by which that which was proposed is proved

What must be achieved by the orator.

Concerning the syllogism or reasoning, and its parts, from the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium.