and notes (p. 2): “From this it appears that Seneca recognized 
three main stages of development: (i) the pre-Ciceronian thesis  
(ii) the privately rehearsed declamations of Cicero and his 
contemporaries, known to them as causae  (iii) the declamation 
proper, known as controversia  and subsequently also as 
scholastica .”

     These scholastic exercises in ancient Rome depended on 
the sic et non  examination of theses. And in his Topics  (I, 9) 
Aristotle refers to such theses as an assertion or negation of 
some exceptional philosophical tenet, giving as examples “that 
everything is in a state of flux” or “that all existence is One.”

     Moreover, “thesis” meant that the topic might not only be 
paradoxical but that it would be considered in abstraction from 
particular circumstances and from “given person place or time.”