Institutio Oratoria

Still, many fall into this error either because they have acquired the habit in declamation or simply owing to a passion for hearing their own voice, thereby affording fine sport to those who reply: for sometimes the latter will remark sarcastically that they never said anything of the kind and have no intention of saying anything so idiotic, and sometimes that they are grateful for the admirable

warnings so kindly given by their opponent: but most often they will say, and this is the strongest line that they can take, that their opponent would never have replied to objections which had never been raised had he not realised that these objections were justified and been driven to admit it by his consciousness of the fact.

We may find an example of this in the pro Cluentio [*](lii. 143.) of Cicero:

You have frequently asserted that you are informed that I intend to base my defence on the letter of the law. Really! I suppose that my friends have secretly betrayed me, and that there is one among those whom I believe to be my friends who reports my designs to my opponent. Who gave you this information? Who was the traitor? And to whom did I ever reveal my design? No one, I think, is to blame. It must have been the law itself that told you.

But there are some who,

not content with raising imaginary objections, develop whole passages on such themes, saying that they know their opponents will say this and will proceed to argue thus and thus. I remember that Vibius Crispus in our own day disposed of this practice very neatly, for he was a humorous fellow with a very pretty wit:

I do not make those objections which you attribute to me,

he said,

for what use would it be to make them twice?

Sometimes however it may be possible to put forward something not unlike such objections, if some point included by our opponent in the depositions which he produces has been discussed among his advocates [*]( The exact purport is not clear. The reference would seem to be to information as to the line of defence likely to be adopted, which has leaked out during a discussion of the written evidence by the advocati or legal advisers of the patronus. But see note prefixed to Index. ) : for then we shall be replying to something which they have said and not to an objection which has been invented by ourselves; or again, this will be possible if the case is of such a nature that we

are in a position to state certain definite objections which are absolutely essential to our opponent's case: for instance, if stolen goods have been discovered in a house, the accused must of necessity allege either that they were brought there without his knowledge or deposited with him or given to him and we may therefore answer all these points even although they have not been put forward.