example, ignorant of the mode of drawing up an agreement, and unacquainted with the forms of a contract, might defend the rights of a woman who has been contracted in marriage, because there were persons who brought everything to the orator or patron, ready prepared,—presenting him with a brief, or memorial, not only on matters of fact, but on the decrees of the Senate, the precedents and the opinions of the jurisconsults. It also appears that there were solicitors, or professors of civil law, whom the orators consulted on any point concerning which they wished to be instructed, and the knowledge of which might be necessary previous to their appearance in the Forum. In this situation, the harangue of the orator was more frequently an appeal to the equity, common sense, or feelings of the judge, than to the laws of his country. Now, where a pleader addresses himself to the equity of his judges, he has much more occasion, and also much more scope, to display his eloquence, than where he must draw his arguments from strict law, statutes, and precedents. In the former case, many circumstances must be taken into account; many personal considerations regarded; and even favour and inclination, which it belongs to the orator to conciliate, by his art and eloquence, may be disguised under the appearance of equity. Accordingly, Cicero, while speaking in his own person, only says, that the science of law and civil rights should not be neglected; but he does not seem to consider it as essential to the orator of the Forum, while he enlarges on the necessity of elegance of language, the erudition of the scholar, a ready and popular wit, and a power of moving the passions(305). That these were the arts to which the Roman orators chiefly trusted for success in the causes of their clients, is apparent from the remains of their discourses, and from what is said of the mode of pleading in the rhetorical treatises of Cicero. “Pontius,” says Antony, in the dialogue so often quoted, “had a son, who served in the war with the Cimbri, and whom he had destined to be his heir; but his father, believing a false report which was spread of his death, made a will in favour of another child. The soldier returned after the decease of his parent; and, had you been employed to defend his cause, you would not have discussed the legal doctrine as to the priority or validity of testaments; you would have raised his father from the grave, made him embrace his child, and recommend him, with many tears, to the protection of the Centumviri.”