I'd have put the matter slightly differently. The word can have either meaning, but context is going to color it in any given sentence. Or the ambiguity can be deliberate, a matter of the author's personal style. That turns up in Latin more than one might think for being such a lapidary language.

Philosophy is not really my area, but if you want to look a little further into it, I would recommend Alan Brinton's article Cicero's Use of Historical Examples in Moral Argument, in the journal Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1988), pp. 169-18

Not to discourage further discussion but /r/asklinguistics might be able to help you better