Publius Calvus and Titus Atilius are escorted homeward by groups of fellow senators as if they were triumphant generals. Their skill, eloquence, pathos, and legal learning are praised to the skies. Each is assured that “he has rendered himself and his friends immortal!” Each to-morrow will begin rewriting his speech, introducing many fine arguments which he has had no time to utter.[186] These will be embalmed in his published works which will be presumably carried some day, tied to poles, in a conspicuous place in his funeral procession. So ends a typical meeting of the Senate under the Empire; noble forms, much dignity, a perfect river of eloquence, a judicial decision in this case conforming with justice, but handling no great issues of diplomacy, high finance, or peace or war. Already Pedius’s friends are consoling him, as he drearily prepares to retire to Macedonia: “In a few years at worst we can get your pardon from the Emperor.” CHAPTER XVIII THE COURTS AND THE ORATORS. THE GREAT BATHS. THE PUBLIC PARKS AND ENVIRONS OF ROME =298. Roman Court Procedure Highly Scientific.=--If Publius Calvus does not have to attend the Senate, two places will assuredly devour a great part of his normal day--the court-house and the public baths. Even if he is not plaintiff, defendant, or witness, like every man of his class he delights in listening to oratory, and etiquette requires that, whenever one of his numerous friends argues a case, he, with as many other senators and equites as possible should sit in the front of the audience, to “lend their distinguished influence,” to lead the salvos of applause, and even to stand up conspicuously behind the orator at critical points in his argument. Roman courts are not like the Athenian dicasteries, huge juries of many hundreds,[187] with tumultuous appeals from the letter of the law to the emotions of the members. Personal influence has its part, but everything is regulated, orderly, scientific. Cases which do not involve the safety of the state or the fate of distinguished personages are usually argued coldly, and with a nice attention to technicalities. Your Roman jurisconsult (expert in the law) is as much superior to an Athenian in developing the science of formal justice, as another Athenian might be to a Roman, in breathing life into chiseled marble. The administration of law is intricate. There are courts behind courts, with final appeal either to the Senate (as we have just seen) or to the Emperor.[188] The “law’s delays” are perfectly well understood by adroit advocates; and Martial records a case that took twenty years while dragging through three successive courts--to the ruin of both sets of litigants.