Book 6
3.5
For all the strongest points of the argument have to be sharply impressed on the memory of the judge, while we have also to make good all the promises we may have made in the course of our speech and to refute the lies of our opponents. There is no point of a trial where the judge's attention is keener. And even mediocre speakers have not without some reason acquired the reputation of being good advocates simply by their excellence in debate.
3.6
Some on the other hand think they have done their duty to their clients by an ostentatious and fatiguing display of elaborate declamation and straightway march out of court attended by an applauding crowd and leave the desperate battle of debate to uneducated performers who often are of but humble origin.
3.7
As a result in private suits you will generally find that different counsel are employed to plead and to prove the case. If the duties of advocacy are to be thus divided, the latter duty must surely be accounted the more important of the two, and it is a disgrace to oratory that inferior advocates should be regarded as adequate to render the greater service to the litigants. In public cases at any rate the actual pleader is cited by the usher as well as the other advocates. The allusion is obscure. But Quintilian's point seems to he merely that the pleader is officially regarded as being of at least equal importance with the other advocates.
