lowing passage: "All that I have said I have addressed to your humanity, your clemency, your compassion. I have pleaded many causes, Cæsar, and some even with you as my coadjutor, whilst you paved the way to your future honours by practice in the forum; but never did I adopt this tone for my client, Pardon him, judges; he has erred; he is guilty; he did it unwittingly, if ever again That is the language to be addressed to a parent; but to a court of justice, this:He did not do it; he never contemplated the act; the witnesses are forsworn; the charge is false.' Tell me, Cæsar, that you are sitting as a judge to try Ligarius on the question of fact, and ask me in whose garrisons he was found. I am at once silent. I care not to plead in excuse that which might perhaps avail, even with a judge, He went there as lieutenant before He was left in the province during the continuance of peace. He was taken by surprise when war broke out; he showed no animosity while it lasted even then he was in his heart, and in his wishes, on your side.' Such would be the line of defence before a judge; but I am speaking to a parent, I have sinned; I acted unadvisedly; I am sorry for my fault; I throw myself upon your mercy; I ask pardon for my offence ; I pray you to forgive me.' If no one has obtained forgiveness from you, it is presumption in me to ask it; but if very many have, then do you, who have encou raged hope, likewise bestow favour." the war. We see that Cicero alludes to the time when Julius Cæsar was engaged, like himself, as an advocate at the Roman bar; and there is but little doubt that he would have been celebrated as one of the greatest speakers of whom Rome could boast, if he had not chosen rather to be her greatest general, and preferred the laurel of CH. V.] JULIUS CÆSAR AN ADVOCATE. 197 the conqueror to the peaceful triumphs of the orator. Quintilian tells us that if he had devoted himself to the forum, he alone would have been named as the rival of Cicero; and that the energy and vehemence of his style corresponded with his character, so that he seemed to speak in the same spirit as that which animated him while carrying on war. Tacitus also says that "Cæsar the dictator was on a par with the greatest orators."2 And he was distinguished by a remarkable elegance and propriety of expression, to which he always paid particular attention.3 How interesting it would have been to read some of his orations, if time had spared them; but none exist, and we know only the names of a few of which incidental mention is made by other writers. These consist of three speeches against Dolabella, who was accused of pecuniary corruption, and three against Domitius and Memmius. He appeared also on behalf of some of the provincial dependencies of the state, speaking on one occasion for the Greeks, and on another for the Bithynians, who, according to the usual custom, sought redress for their grievances by committing their causes into the hands of some powerful advocate at Rome. We may close the list of orators in the time of the republic with the names of Junius Brutus, Cælius Rufus, Licinius Calvus, Asinius Pollio, and Messala Corvinus, of whom Rufus and Corvinus, or, as he is usually called, Messala, attained considerable eminence in the forum. They were men of very different cha-racters, the former being as conspicuous for his vices as the latter was distinguished by his virtues. Rufus was 1 Inst. Orat. x. 1. 114. Dictator Cæsar summis oratoribus æmulus. Ann. xiii. 3. defended by Cicero when brought to trial on the charge of having suborned the slaves of a Roman matron, named Clodia, a woman of no good repute, to poison their mistress, and the speech of the advocate reveals a corrupt condition of morals at Rome. Society must have been in a vicious state, when a counsel could thus address a grave court of judicature: Verum si quis est, qui etiam meretriciis amoribus interdictum juventuti putet, est ille quidem valde severus; negare non possum: sed abhorret non modo ab hujus sæculi licentiâ, verum etiam a majorum consuetudine, atque concessis. CH. VI.] THE BAR UNDER THE EMPIRE. 199 CHAPTER VI. THE BAR UNDER THE EMPIRE AND IN THE Roma, Roma, non è più com' era prima. Roman Song. THE palmy days of forensic oratory at Rome passed away with the republic. And this is no more than might be expected; for eloquence withers under the cold shade of arbitrary and irresponsible power, and without free institutions few if any opportunities can exist for exercising that godlike gift, except in opposing some act of tyranny at the peril of fortune and of life. And it would be absurd to suppose that a profession would be embraced for such a purpose, and that the advocates of imperial Rome would devote themselves to martyrdom in the hopeless cause of liberty. The fate of Cremutius Cordus, in the reign of Tiberius, was a sufficient warning of the danger incurred by even alluding in terms of praise to the patriots of the republic; for he was accused of the crime of having eulogized Brutus, and designated Cassius as "the last of the Romans," and feeling that the charge was of too heinous a nature to admit any chance of escape,-after a spirited speech, he starved himself to death, and his book was ordered by the senate to be publicly burnt.' With the exception of Quintilian and the younger Pliny, our minds are familiar with the names of none of the advocates who flourished during the five centuries 1 Tac. Ann. iv. 34, 35. that intervened between Augustus and Justinian; and the former are known to us as writers rather than speakers, for neither of them was remarkable for any high order of eloquence. In the dialogue, De Causis corruptæ Eloquentiæ, which was written little more than a century after the death of Cicero, Tacitus feelingly laments that oratory was extinct. "Often," he says, "have you asked me, Justus Fabius, why, when former ages were so distinguished by the genius and renown of orators, our own age, destitute and bereft of glory, scarce retains the very name. For we style none such now except the ancients; but the speakers of the present day are called pleaders, and advocates, and barristers, and anything rather than orators." He proceeds afterwards to investigate the causes of the decline of eloquence, and draws a comparison between the mode of education in former days and that pursued in his own time; dwelling with just severity upon the pernicious custom which had crept in of mothers abandoning the care and nurture of their offspring to servants, instead of, like the noble matrons of old, such as Cornelia and Aurelia, watching over and superintending their education themselves. The consequence was, that those who were destined for the bar were trained up in no habits of study, and took no pains to qualify themselves, by laborious preparation, for their profession; but deemed it sufficient to pick up in the schools of the rhetoricians meretricious and tinsel ornaments of style. Thus they were accustomed to deliver " miserable show speeches," as Niebuhr calls them, and furnished with such commonplaces as their stock in trade, they retailed them in the courts, under the delusive notion that their empty declamation was eloquence. Tacitus complains strongly of their ignorance of law, which they |