Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

"Thus a Roman, of consular dignity, imitated the illustrious Socrates of old, who, as he was a man of the greatest wisdom and had lived in the utmost integrity, spoke for himself, when on trial for his life, in such a manner as not to seem a suppliant or prisoner, but the lord and master of his judges. Even when Lysias. a most eloquent orator, brought him a written speech, which, if he pleased, he might learn by heart and repeat at his trial, he willingly read it over, and said it was written in a manner very well suited to the occasion; but, said he, if you had brought me Sicyonian shoes, 28I should not wear them, though they might be easy and suit my feet, because they would be effeminate; so that speech seems to me to be eloquent and becoming an orator, but not fearless and manly. In consequence, he also was condemned, not only by the first votes, by which the judges only decided whether they should acquit or condemn, but also by those which, in conformity with the laws, they were obliged to give afterwards. For at Athens, if the accused person was found guilty, and if his crime was not capital, there was a sort of estimation of punishment; and when sentence was to be finally given by the judges, the criminal was asked what degree of punishment he acknowledged himself, at most, to deserve; and when this question was put to Socrates, he answered, that he deserved to be distinguished with the noblest honours and rewards, and to be daily maintained at the public expense in the prytaneion; an honour which, amongst the Greeks, is accounted the very highest. By which answer his judges were so exasperated, that they condemned the most innocent of men to death. But had he been acquitted, (which, indeed, though it is of no concern to us, yet I could wish to have been the case, because of the greatness of his genius,) how could we have patience with those philosophers who now, though Socrates was condemned for no other crime but want of skill in speaking, maintain that the precepts of oratory should be learned from themselves, who are disciples of Socrates? With these men I have no dispute as to which of the two sciences is superior, or carries more truth in it; I only say that the one is distinct from the other, and that oratory may exist in the highest perfection without philosophy.

"In bestowing such warm approbation on the civil law, Crassus, I see what was your motive; when you were speaking, I did not see it. 29In the first place, you were willing to oblige Scaevola, whom we ought all to esteem most deservedly for his singularly excellent disposition; and seeing his science unassisted and unadorned, you have enriched it with your eloquence as with a dowry, and decorated it with a profusion of ornaments. In the next, as you had spent much pains and labour in the acquisition of it, (since you had in your own house one 30who encouraged and instructed you in that study,) you were afraid that you might lose the fruit of your industry, if you did not magnify the science by your eloquence. But I have no dispute with the science; let it be of as much consequence as you represent it; for without doubt it is of great and extensive concern, having relation to multitudes of people, and has always been held in the highest honour; and our most eminent citizens have ever been, and are still, at the head of the profession of it; but take care, Crassus, lest, while you strive to adorn the knowledge of the civil law with new and foreign ornaments, you spoil and denude her of what is granted and accorded to her as her own. For if you were to say, that he who is a lawyer is also an orator, and that he who is an orator is also a lawyer, you would make two excellent branches of knowledge, each equal to the other, and sharers of the same dignity; but now you allow that a man may be a lawyer without the eloquence which we are considering, and that there have been many such; and you deny that a man can be an orator who has not acquired a knowledge of law. Thus the lawyer is, of himself, nothing with you but a sort of wary and acute legalist, an instructor in actions, 31a repeater of formulae, a catcher at syllables; but because the orator has frequent occasion for the aid of the law in his pleadings, you have of necessity joined legal knowledge to eloquence as a handmaid and attendant.

"But as to your wonder at the effrontery of those advocates who, though they were ignorant of small things, profess great ones, or who ventured, in the management of cases, to treat of the most important points in the civil law, though they neither understood nor had ever learned them, the defence on both charges is easy and ready. For it is not at all surprising that he who is ignorant in what form of words a contract of marriage is made, should be able to defend the case of a woman who has formed such a contract; nor, though the same skill in steering is requisite for a small as for a large vessel, is he therefore, who is ignorant of the form of words by which an estate is to be divided, incapable of pleading a case relative to the division of an estate. 32For though you appealed to cases of great consequence, pleaded before the centumviri, that turned upon points of law, what case was there amongst; them all, which could not have been ably pleaded by an eloquent man unacquainted with law? in all which cases, as in the case of Manius Curius, which was lately pleaded by you, 33and that of Gaius Hostilius Mancinus, 34and that of the boy who was born of a second wife, without any notice of divorce having been sent to the first, 35there was the greatest disagreement among the most skilful lawyers on points of law. I ask, then, how in these cases a knowledge of the law could have aided the orator, when that lawyer must have had the superiority, who was supported, not by his own, but a foreign art, not by knowledge of the law, but by eloquence? I have often heard that, when Publius Crassus was a candidate for the aedileship, and Servius Galba, though older than he, and even of consular dignity, attended upon him to promote his interest, (having betrothed Crassus's daughter to his son Gaius,) there came a countryman to Crassus to consult him on some matter of law; and when he had taken Crassus aside, and laid the affair before him, and received from him such an answer as was rather right than suited to his wishes, Galba, seeing him look dejected, called him by his name, and asked him on what matter he had consulted Crassus; when, having heard his case, and seeing the man in great trouble, 'I perceive,' said he, 'that Crassus gave you an answer while his mind was anxious, and pre-occupied with other affairs.' He then took Crassus by the hand, and said, 'Now then, how came it into your head to give this man such an answer?' Crassus, who was a man of great legal knowledge, confidently repeated that the matter was exactly as he had stated in his answer, and that there could be no doubt. But Galba, referring to a variety and multiplicity of matters, adduced abundance of similar cases, and used many arguments for equity against the strict letter of law; while Crassus, as he could not maintain his ground in the debate, (for, though he was numbered among the eloquent, he was by no means equal to Galba,) had recourse to authorities, and showed what he had asserted in the books of his brother Publius Mucius, 36and in the commentaries of Sextus Aelius; though he allowed, at the same time, that Galba's arguments had appeared to him plausible, and almost true.

"But cases which are of such a kind, that there can be no doubt of the law relative to them, do not usually come to be tried at all. Does any one claim an inheritance under a will, which the father of a family made before he had a son born? Nobody; because it is clear that by the birth of a son the will is cancelled. 37Upon such points of law, therefore, there are no questions to be tried. The orator, accordingly, may be ignorant of all this part of the law relative to controversies, 38which is without doubt the far greater part; but on those points which are disputed, even among the most skilful lawyers, it will not be difficult for the orator to find some writer of authority on that side, whichsoever it be, that he is to defend, from whom, when he has received his javelins ready for throwing, he will hurl them with the arm and strength of an orator. Unless we are to suppose, indeed, ( I would wish to make the observation without offending this excellent man Scaevola, ) that you, Crassus, defended the case of Manius Curius out of the writings and rules of your father-in-law. Did you not, on the contrary, undertake the defence of equity, the support of wills, and the intention of the dead? Indeed, in my opinion, (for I was frequently present and heard you,) you won the far greater number of votes by your wit, humour, and charming banter, when you joked upon the extraordinary acuteness, and expressed admiration of the genius, of Scaevola, who had discovered that a man must be born before he can die; and when you adduced many cases, both from the laws and decrees of the senate, as well as from common life and intercourse, not only acutely, but facetiously and sarcastically, in which, if we attended to the letter, and not the spirit, nothing would result. The trial, therefore, was attended with abundance of mirth and pleasantry; but of what service your knowledge of the civil law was to you upon it, I do not understand; your great power in speaking, united with the utmost humour and grace, certainly was of great service. Even Mucius himself, the defender of the father's right, who fought as it were for his own patrimony, what argument did he propose in the case, when he spoke against you, that appeared to be drawn from the civil law? What particular law did he recite? What did he explain in his speech that was unintelligible to the unlearned? The whole of his speech was employed upon one point; that is, in maintaining that what was written ought to be valid. But every boy is exercised on such subjects by his master, when he is instructed to support, in such cases as these, sometimes the written letter, sometimes equity. In that case of the soldier, I presume, if you had defended either him or the heir, you would have had recourse to the cases of Hostilius, 39and not to your own power and talent as an orator. Nay, rather, if you had defended the will, you would have argued in such a manner, that the entire validity of all wills whatsoever would have seemed to depend upon that single trial; or, if you had pleaded the case of the soldier, you would have raised his father, with your usual eloquence, from the dead; you would have placed him before the eyes of the audience; he would have embraced his son, and with tears have recommended him to the centumviri; you would have forced the very stones to weep and lament, so that all that clause, as the tongue had declared, would seem not to have been written in the Twelve Tables, which you prefer to all libraries, but in some mere formula of a teacher.