Institutio Oratoria

It is an open question whether he should never demand a fee for his services. To decide the question at first sight would be the act of a fool. For we all know that by far the most honourable course, and the one which is most in keeping with a liberal education and that temper of mind which we desiderate, is not to sell our services nor to debase the value of such a boon as eloquence, since there are not a few things which come to be regarded as

This much even the blind can see, as the saying is, and no one who is the possessor of sufficient wealth to satisfy his needs (and that does not imply any great opulence) will seek to secure an income by such methods without laying himself open to the charge of meanness. On the other hand, if his domestic circumstances are such as to require some addition to his income to enable him to meet the necessary demands upon his purse, there is not a philosopher who would forbid him to accept this form of recompense for his services, since collections were made even on behalf of Socrates, and Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus took fees from their pupils.

Nor can I see how we can turn a more honest penny than by performance of the most honourable of tasks and by accepting money from those to whom we have rendered the most signal services and who, if they made no return for what we have done for them, would show themselves undeserving to have been defended by us. Nay, it is not only just, but necessary that this should be so, since the duties of advocacy and the bestowal of every minute of our time on the affairs of others deprive us of all other means of making money.

But we must none the less observe the happy mean, and it makes no small difference from whom we take payment, what payment we demand, and how long we continue to do so. As for the piratical practice of bargaining and the scandalous traffic of those who proportion their fees to the peril in which their would-be client stands, such a procedure will be eschewed even by those who are more than half scoundrels, more especially since the advocate who devotes himself

To conelude, then, the orator will not seek to make more money than is sufficient for his needs, and even if he is poor, he will not regard his payment as a fee, but rather as the expression of the principle that one good turn deserves another, since he will be well aware that he has conferred far more than he receives. For it does not follow that because his services ought not to be sold, they should therefore be unremunerated. Finally, gratitude is primarily the business of the debtor.

We have next to consider how a case should be studied, since such study is the foundation of oratory. There is no one so destitute of all talent as, after making himself thoroughly familiar with all the facts of his case, to be unable at least to communicate those facts to the judge.

But those who devote any serious attention to such study are very few indeed. For, to say nothing of those careless advocates who are quite indifferent as to what the pivot of the whole case may be, provided only there are points which, though irrelevant to the case, will give them the opportunity of declaiming in thunderous tones on the character of persons involved or developing some commonplace, there are some who are so perverted by vanity that, on the oft-repeated pretext that they are occupied by other business, they bid their client come to them on the day preceding the trial or early on the morning of the day itself, and sometimes even boast that they learnt up their case while sitting in court;