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[1] This is what took place throughout Gaul and Before
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the northern part of the empire. But in the regions of the East, amid the profound quiet of foreign affairs, destructive internal corruption was increasing through the friends and intimates of Valens, with whom advantage prevailed over honour. For diligent efforts were exerted to turn the emperor, as a severe man and eager to hear cases at law, from his desire to act as judge; for fear that as in the times of Julian,
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if the defence of innocence should revive, the arrogance of powerful men, which under the licence that they had assumed was in the habit of always reaching out farther, might be checked.
[2] On these and similar grounds many united in a common attempt at dissuasion and in particular the praetorian prefect Modestus,
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a man wholly subjected to the influence of the eunuchs of the court, of a boorish nature refined by no reading of the ancient writers. He, wearing a forced and deceptive expression, declared that the trivialities of private cases at law were beneath the dignity of the imperial majesty. Accordingly Valens, thinking that the examination of swarms
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of legal cases was devised to humble
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the loftiness of the royal power, in accordance with the advice of Modestus, abstained from it wholly, thereby opening the doors to robbery; and this grew stronger day by day through the wickedness of judges and advocates in collusion; for they sold their decisions of the cases of poorer people to officers in the army, or to powerful men within the palace, and thus gained either wealth or high position.
[3] This trade of forensic oratory the great Plato defined as
πολιτικῆς μορίου εἴδωλον (that is, the shadow of a small part of the science of government
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) or as the fourth part of flattery;
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but Epicurus counts it among evil arts, calling it
κακοτεχνία.
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Tisias
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says that it is the artist of persuasion, and Gorgias of Leontini agrees with him.
[4] This art, thus defined by the men of old, the cunning of certain Orientals raised to a degree hateful to good men, for which reason it is even confined by the restraints of a time fixed beforehand.
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Therefore after having described in a very few words its unworthiness, with which I became acquainted while I was living in those parts, I shall return to the course of the narrative with which I began.
[5] Formerly judgement-seats gained glory through the support of old-time refinement, when orators of fiery eloquence,
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devoted to learned studies, were eminent for talent and justice, and for the fluency and many adornments of their diction; for example Demosthenes, to hear whom, when he was going to speak, as the Attic records testify, the people were wont to flock together from all Greece
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; and Callistratus,
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to whom, when he pleaded in that celebrated case in defence of Oropos (which is a place in Euboea
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) that same Demosthenes attached himself, forsaking the Academy and Plato; also, Hyperides, Aeschines, Andocides, Dinarchus, and the famous Antiphon of Rhamnus, who, according to the testimony of antiquity, was the first of all to accept a fee for conducting a defence.
[6] Not less eminent among the Romans were men like Rutilius, Galba, and Scaurus, conspicuous for their life, their character, and their uprightness; and later in the various epochs of subsequent times many former censors and consuls, and men who had been honoured with triumphs, such as Crassus, Antonius, Philippus, Scaevola,
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and many others, after successful campaigns, after victories and trophies, distinguished themselves by civic services to the State, and winning laurels in the glorious contests of the Forum, enjoyed Fame’s highest honours.
[7] After these Cicero, the most eminent of them all, by the floods of his all-conquering oratory often saved the oppressed from the fiery ordeal of the courts, and declared:
It might perhaps be pardonable to refuse to defend some men, but to defend them negligently could be nothing but criminal.
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[8] But now it is possible to see in all the regions of the Orient powerful and rapacious classes of men flitting from one forum to another, besieging the home hounds
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sagaciously picking up the tracks until they come to the very lairs of lawsuits.
[9] Among these the first class consists of those who, by sowing the seeds of all sorts of quarrels, busy themselves with thousands of recognisances, wearing out the doors of widows and the thresholds of childless men; and if they have found even slight retreats
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of secret enmity, they rouse deadly hatred among discordant friends, kinsfolk, or relatives. And in these men their vices do not cool down in course of time, as do those of others, but grow stronger and stronger. Poor amid insatiable robbery, they draw the dagger
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of their talent to lead astray by crafty speeches the good faith of the judges, whose title is derived from justice.
[10] By their persistence rashness tries to pass itself off as freedom of speech; and reckless audacity as firmness of purpose; a kind of empty flow of words as eloquence. By the perversity of these arts, as Cicero insists, it is a sin for the conscientiousness of a judge
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to be deceived. For he says:
And since nothing in a state ought to be so free from corruption as the suffrage and judicial decisions, I do not understand why one who corrupts them by money deserves punishment, while one who corrupts them by his eloquence is even praised. For my part, I think that he does more evil who corrupts a judge by a speech than one who does so by money; for no one can corrupt a sensible man by money, but he can do so by words.
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[11] A second class consists of those who profess a knowledge of law, which, however, the self-contradictory statutes have destroyed, and reticent as if they were muzzled, in never-ending silence they are like their own shadows. These men, as though revealing destinies by nativities or interpreting a Sibyl’s oracles, assume a solemn expression of severe bearing and try to make even their yawning saleable.
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[12] In order to seem to have a deeper knowledge of the law, they talk of Trebatius,
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Cascellius,
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and Alfenus,
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and of the laws of the Aurunci and Sicani,
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which were long since forgotten and buried many ages ago along with Evander’s mother.
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And if you pretend that you have purposely murdered
your mother, they promise, if they have observed that you are a moneyed man,
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that their many recondite studies will secure an acquittal for you.
[13] A third group consists of those who, in order to gain glory by their troublous profession, sharpen their venal tongues
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to attack the truth, and with shameless brow and base yelping often gain entrance wherever they wish. When the anxious judges are distracted by many cares, they tie up the business in an inexplicable tangle, and do their best to involve all peace and quiet in lawsuits and purposely by knotty inquisitions they deceive the courts, which, when their procedure is right, are temples of justice, when corrupted, are deceptive and hidden pits: and if anyone is deluded and falls into those pits, he will not get out except after many a term of years, when he has been sucked dry to his very marrow.
[14] The fourth and last class, shameless, headstrong, and ignorant, consists of those who have broken away too soon from the elementary schools, run to and fro through the corners of the cities, thinking out mimiambic lines,
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rather than speeches suitable to win law-suits, wearing out the doors of the rich, and hunting for banquets and fine choice food.
[15] When they have once devoted themselves to shady gain and to eagerness for money from any and every source, they urge all kinds of innocent people to involve themselves in vain litigations. And when they are allowed to defend suits, which rarely happens, amidst the very turning-points of the disputes they learn the name of their client and the purport of the business in hand from the mouth of the judge, and they so overflow with disarranged circumlocutions that in the foul hotchpotch you would think you were hearing a Thersites
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with his howling din.
[16] But when they find themselves in the end unable to defend the charges, they turn to unbridled licence in abuse; and on this account, because of their constant insults of persons of rank, they are prosecuted and often condemned; and among them are some who are so ignorant that they cannot remember that they ever possessed a law-book.
[17] And if in a circle of learned men the name of an ancient writer happens to be mentioned, they think it is a foreign word for some fish or other edible; but if any stranger asks for the orator Marcianus (for example),
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who was before unknown to him, at once they all pretend that their own name is Marcianus.
[18] And they no longer have before their eyes any right, but as if sold to and enslaved by avarice, they understand nothing except endless licence in making demands. And if once they have caught anyone in their nets, they entangle him in a thousand toils, purposely defaulting by pretending sicknesses one after another; and they prepare seven plausible preambles in order that the useless reading of well-known law may be introduced, thus weaving swarms
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of long delays.
[19] And when the contending parties are stripped of everything, and days, months and years are used up, at last the case, now worn out with age, is introduced, and those brilliant principals
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come forth, bringing with them other shadows of advocates. And when theyhave come within the barriers
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of the court, and the fortunes or safety of some one begins to be discussed, and they ought to work to turn the sword or ruinous loss from an innocent person, the advocates on both sides wrinkling their brows and waving their arms in semblance of the gestures of actors (so that they lack only the oratorical pipe
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of Gracchus behind them) stand for a long time opposite each other. At last, in accordance with a prearranged agreement, the one who is more confident in speech utters a kind of a sweet prologue, promising to emulate the ornamental language of a speech for Cluentius
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or Ctesiphon;
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and when all are wishing for the end, such is the method of his peroration that the advocates, after the semblance of a trial has gone on for three years, allege that they are not yet fully informed; and after they have obtained a further postponement, as if they had struggled with Antaeus
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of old, they persistently demand the pay for their danger and toil.
[20] But yet, in spite of this, advocates suffer many inconveniences, not easy to be endured by a man who would live rightly. For, allured by the profits of their sedentary
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trade, they differ among themselves and become enemies, and they offend many by their outbursts of abusive ferocity (as has been said), which they blab out in a torrent when they have no arguments strong enough to fortify the weakness of the cases which have been entrusted to them.
[21] And they have to deal with judges who sometimes are taught by the sophisms of Philistion or Aesopus,
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rather than reared in the discipline of your Aristides the Just or Cato. Such men, having bought public office for large sums of money, like tiresome creditors prying into the resources of every kind of fortune, shake out booty from other men’s bosoms.
[22] Finally, the profession of advocate has, with the rest, this serious and dangerous evil, which is native to almost all litigants, that although their cases may be lost by a thousand accidents, they think their ill-success lies wholly in the ability of their advocates, and they are accustomed to attribute the outcome of every contest to them; and they vent their anger not on the weakness of their case or the frequent injustice of the magistrate who decides it, but only on their defenders. But let us return to the point from which we made the digression.
Res Gestae. Ammianus Marcellinus. John C. Rolfe (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-1940.
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