=293. Speech for the Defendant: Methods of a Professional Advocate.=--After order is restored a grave old senator--Quintus Saturius--arises to answer the prosecutor. He is a professional advocate of fame, but evil report has it that in his youth under Domitian he was a _delator_ (professional accuser), and won a fortune by prosecuting the innocent victims of that bad Emperor’s disfavor. Since then he has never been squeamish in accepting doubtful causes. The law only allows him 10,000 sesterces ($400) as the fee from each legal client, but the latter has plenty of indirect means of showing his “gratitude,” and Saturius’s wealth now is enormous. This morning he has carefully smeared eye-salve above his left eye--a token that he is to speak for the defendant, not over the right as if for the plaintiff. His toga also floats in billowy folds, his hands flash with costly rings, and his powerful voice soon booms through the Curia. [Illustration: CICERO DENOUNCING CATILINE BEFORE THE SENATE: painting in modern Senate House in Rome.] Saturius does not waste time denying that many of Pedius’s misdeeds have been proved, but he praises at great length his client’s “glorious ancestry” and distinguished social connections. As for the accusations,--what if he did abuse his office? Was a member of the great house of the Annii to be held down to the sordid rules befitting mere plebeians and freedmen? What if an eques _had_ been wrongfully done to death? Was not the fellow by birth a Phrygian who had gained first citizenship and then the “narrow-stripe” merely by the use of his wits? How could so great a man as the Proconsul of Asia be expected to live on a beggarly salary of 1,000,000 sesterces ($40,000)? At this point Saturius’s voice begins in fact to tremble with pathos. How can the Conscript Fathers bring themselves to disgrace all the defendant’s distinguished relatives who just now are sitting behind him in the gray togas of public mourning? Think of his distressed wife whose father and all three uncles were at least prætors! Think of his brother who had been killed bravely fighting the Parthians! Think of his two sons whose public careers would be blighted by the disgrace of their father! Think finally of the Senate itself--what contempt upon the “Venerable Order” if one of its most prominent members should be ruined on the testimony of mere provincials and upstarts! etc., etc. =294. Concluding Speeches; Interrupting Shouts; Personal Invectives.=--Saturius, ere concluding, works himself into a fine passion. He also gets sallies of applause--mostly from the self-same men who have just cheered Calvus. But at some of his assertions there are murmurs of dissent, and even open shouts such as “Drop that argument!” “Don’t insult our intelligence!” Finally, however, he sits down, having exhausted his four water clocks. More cheers, more congratulations, everybody swears to his neighbor the day is proving an intellectual feast.