Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/86

66 lay under grave imputations, or as if when I was discoursing of the corruption of the courts I could at that time have passed over this case which was then in every one's mouth. If I said anything of the kind, I was not speaking from ascertained inquiry nor was I giving evidence in the witness-box, and my remarks were such as the occasion demanded and not to be taken for my final sentence and judgment. . It is a great mistake to suppose that in our speeches, which are delivered at the bar, you have our deliberate judgments on record. All such speeches are the utterances not so much of the counsel as of his brief and of the case. For, if the case of a litigant could speak for itself, no one would employ a pleader. Now we are employed to utter, not that which we are to lay down on our own responsibility, but that which is prompted by the requirements of the case in which we are engaged."

Side by side with this passage we may set another from the Brutus in which Cicero's ideal of the qualities of the forensic orator is more fully set forth. "To have studied more subtilely than other men that literature wherein the fountain-head of perfect eloquence is to be found; to have embraced philosophy the mother of all good deeds and good words: to have learned the Civil Law, a matter most necessary for private suits and for the technical skill of a pleader; to hold in your memory the story of Rome, whence you can summon, when need is, most authentic witnesses from the tomb; to be able