Institutio Oratoria

When our orator has developed his strength to such a pitch that it is equal to every kind of confact in which he may be called upon to bear his part, his first consideration should be to exercise care in the choice of the cases which he proposes to undertake. A good man will undoubtedly prefer defence to prosecution, but he will not have such a rooted objection to the task of accuser as to disregard his duty towards the state or towards individuals and refuse to call any man to render an account of his way of life. For the laws themselves would be powerless without the assistance of advocates equal to the task of supporting them; and to regard it as a sin to demand the punishment of crime is almost equivalent to the sanctioning of crime, while it is certainly contrary to the interest of the good to give the wicked free leave to work their will.

Therefore, our orator will not suffer the complaints of our allies, the death of friends or kinsmen, or conspiracies that threaten the common weal to go unavenged, while his conduct will be governed not by a passion to secure the punishment of the guilty, but by the

Consequently, while to devote one's life to the task of accusation, and to be tempted by the hope of reward to bring the guilty to trial is little better than making one's living by highway robbery, none the less to rid one's country of the pests that gnaw its vitals is conduct worthy of comparison with that of heroes, who champion their country's cause in the field of battle. For this reason men who were leaders of the state have not refused to undertake this portion of an orator's duty, and even young men of high rank have been regarded as giving their country a pledge of their devotion by accusing bad citizens, since it was thought that their hatred of evil and their readiness to incur enmity were proofs of their confidence in their own rectitude.

Such action was taken by Hortensius, the Luculli, Sulpicius, Cicero, Caesar and many others, among them both the Catos, of whom one was actually called the Wise, [*](i.e. Cato the Elder. ) while if the other is not regarded as wise, I do not know of any that can claim the title after him. On the other hand, this same orator of ours will not defend all and sundry: that haven of safety which his eloquence provides will never be opened to pirates as it is to others, and he will be led to undertake cases mainly by consideration of their nature.

However, since one man cannot undertake the cases of all litigants who are not, as many undoubtedly are, dishonest, he will be influenced to some extent by the character of the persons who recommend clients to his protection and also by the character of the litigants themselves, and will allow himself to be moved by

But he must put away from him two kinds of pretentious display, the one consisting in the officious proffering of his services to the powerful against those of meaner position, and the other, which is even more obtrusive, in deliberately supporting inferiors against those of high degree. For a case is not rendered either just or the reverse by the social position of the parties engaged. Nor, again, will a sense of shame deter him from throwing over a case which he has undertaken in the belief that it had justice on its side, but which his study of the facts has shown to be unjust, although before doing so he should give his client his true opinion on the case.

For, if we judge aright, there is no greater benefit that we can confer on our clients than this, that we should not cheat them by giving them empty hopes of success. On the other hand, no client that does not take his advocate into his counsel deserves that advocate's assistance, and it is certainly unworthy of our ideal orator that he should wittingly defend injustice. For if he is led to defend what is false by any of the motives which I mentioned above, [*](XII. i. 36.) his own action will still be honourable.