Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/85

67 B.C.] we know, the Senate, until after he was elected prætor in 66 B.C. At this period of his life Cicero is above all things a pleader at the bar, and it will be interesting to see what are his own notions of the duty of an advocate. They are just those which the practical necessities of pleading have prescribed to modern lawyers. The advocate speaks as the representative of his client; it is not his business to weigh the case as a judge, but to put as strongly as possible those points which are in favour of his client, and to extenuate those which make against him. It once fell to Cicero's lot to speak in defence of a man named Aulus Cluentius who lay under strong suspicion of having bribed a jury to obtain the condemnation of his enemy. The case was a notorious one, and had been referred to as such by Cicero, when three years previously in his speech against Verres he was inveighing against the corruption of the courts. The counsel opposed to Cluentius took advantage of this circumstance to claim the authority of Cicero's sentence against his own client. Cicero's argument in reply is very much what an English barrister would plead on a similar occasion. "There remains one most weighty judgment, which to my shame I was nearly forgetting to notice, for it is that of no less a person than myself. Attius read out of some speech or other, which he said was mine, an appeal to a jury to give a righteous verdict, in which I referred to some verdicts of evil fame, and amongst others to that of the court over which Junius presided; just as if I had not said myself in opening this speech that the verdict in