Institutio Oratoria

some who have grown old in the schools lose their heads when confronted by the novelty of the law courts and wish that it were possible to reproduce all the conditions under which they delivered their exercises. But there sits the judge in silence, their opponent bellows at them, no rash utterance passes unnoticed and all assumptions must be proved, the clock cuts short the speech that has been laboriously pieced together at the cost of hours of study both by day and night, and there are certain cases which require simplicity of language and the abandonment of the perpetual bombast of the schools, a fact which these fluent fellows completely fail to realise.

And so you will find some persons who regard themselves as too eloquent to speak in the courts. On the other hand, the man, whom we conducted to the forum while still young and in the charm of immaturity, should begin with as easy and favourable a case as may be (just as the cubs of wild beasts are brought up to start with on softer forms of prey), and should not proceed straight from this commencement to plead case after case without a break, or cause his talents to set and harden while they still require nourishment; on the contrary, as soon as he has come to realise the nature of the conflicts in which he will have to engage and the object to which his studies should be directed, he should take an interval of rest and refreshment. Thus,