Institutio Oratoria

Cassius Severus showed his wit by transferring a charge made against himself to a different quarter. For when lie was reproached by the praetor on the ground that his advocates had insulted Lucius Varus, an Epicurean and a friend of Caesar, he replied,

I do not know who they were who insulted him, I suppose they were Stoics.

Of retorts there are a number of forms, the wittiest being that which is helped out by a certain verbal similarity, as in the retort made by Trachalus to Suelius. The latter had said,

If that is the case, you go into exile

: to which Trachalus replied,

And if it is not the case, you go back into exile.

[*]( The point is obscure; we have no key to the circumstances of the jest. )

Cassius Severus baffled an opponent who reproached him with the fact that Proculeius had forbidden him to enter his house by replying,

Do I ever go there?

But one jest may also be defeated by another: for example, Augustus of blessed memory, when the Gauls gave him a golden necklet weighing a hundred pounds, and Dolabella, speaking in jest but with an eye to the success of his jest, said,

General, give me your necklet,

replied,

I had rather give you the crown of oak leaves.

[*]( The civic crown of oak leaves was given as a reward for saving the life of a fellow-citizen in war. The torquis was often given as a reward for valour, and Augustus pretends to believe that Dolabella had asked for a military decoration. The point lies in the contrast between the intrinsic value and weight of the two decorations. Further, Augustus was very parsimonious in bestowing military decorations and had himself received the crown of oak leaves from the senate as the saviour of Rome, a fact which must have rendered its bestowal on others rare, if not non-existent. )

So, too, one lie may be defeated by another: Galba, for instance, when someone told him that he once bought a lamprey five feet long for half a denarius in Sicily, replied,

There is nothing extraordinary in that: for they grow to such a length in those seas that the fishermen tie them round their waists in lieu of ropes!

Then there is the opposite of denial,

namely a feigned confession, which likewise may show no small wit. Thus Afer, when pleading against a freedman of Claudius Caesar and when another freedman called out from the opposite side of the court,

You are always speaking against Caesar's freedmen,

replied,

Yes, but I make precious little headway.

A similar trick is not to deny a charge, though it is obviously false and affords good opportunity for an excellent reply. For example, when Philippus said to Catulus,

Why do you bark so?

the latter replied, [*](cp. Cic. de Or. II. liv. 220. )

I see a thief.