o touch at all in reply upon
a point which makes against your client, and to which you have no real
answer; and that it is even more important to say nothing which may injure
your case, than to omit something which might possibly serve it. A maxim
which some modern barristers (and some preachers also) might do well to
bear in mind.

Yet he did not scorn to use what may almost be called the tricks of his
art, if he thought they would help to secure him a verdict. The outward
and visible appeal to the feelings seems to have been as effective in the
Roman forum as with a British jury. Cicero would have his client stand by
his side dressed in mourning, with hair dishevelled, and in tears, when
he meant to make a pathetic appeal to the compassion of the jurors; or a
family group would be arranged, as circumstances allowed,--the wife and
children, the mother and sisters, or the aged father, if presentable,
would be introduced in open court to create a sensation at the right
moment. He had tears apparently as ready at his command as an eloquent
and well-known English Attorney-General. Nay, the tears seem to have been
marked down, as it were, upon his brief. "My feelings prevent my saying
more", he declares in his defence of Publius Sylla. "I weep while I make
the appeal"--"I cannot go on for tears"--he repeats towards the close of
that fine oration in behalf of Milo--the speech that never was spoken.
Such phrases remind us of the story told of a French preacher, whose
manuscripts were found to have marginal stage directions: "Here take out
your handkerchief;"--"here cry--if possible". But such were held to be the
legitimate adjuncts of Roman oratory, and it is quite possible to conceive
that the advocate, like more than one modern tragedian who could be named,
entered so thoroughly into the spirit of the part that the tears flowed
quite naturally.

A far less legitimate weapon of oratory--offensive and not defensive--was
the bitter and coarse personality in which he so frequently indulged. Its
use was held perfectly lawful in the Roman forum, whether in political
debate or in judicial pleadings, and it was sure to be highly relished by
a mixed audience. There is no reason to suppose that Cicero had
recourse to it in any unusual degree; but employ it he did, and most
unscrupulously. It was not only private character that he attacked, as in
the case of Antony and Clodius, but even personal defects or peculiarities
were made the