Antony, speaking of one of his own most celebrated orations, says, that his whole address consisted, 1st, in moving the passions; 2d, in recommending _himself_; and that it was thus, and not by convincing the understanding of the judges, that he baffled the impeachment against his clients(306). Valerius Maximus has supplied, in his eighth book, many examples of unexpected and unmerited acquittals, as well as condemnations, from bursts of compassion and theatrical incidents. The wonderful influence, too, of a ready and popular wit in the management of causes, is apparent from the instances given in the second book _De Oratore_ of the effects it had produced in the Forum. The jests which are there recorded, though not very excellent, may be regarded as the finest flowers of wit of the Roman bar. Sometimes they were directed against the opposite party, his patron, or witnesses; and, if sufficiently impudent, seldom failed of effect. That the principles and precepts of the civil law were so little studied by the Roman orators, and hardly ever alluded to in their harangues, while, on the other hand, the arts of persuasion, and wit, and excitement of the passions, were all-powerful, and were the great engines of legal discussion, must be attributed to the constitution of the courts of law, and the nature of the judicial procedure, which, though very imperfect for the administration of justice, were well adapted to promote and exercise the highest powers of eloquence. It was the forms of procedure—the description of the courts before which questions were tried—and the nature of these questions themselves(307)—that gave to Roman oratory such dazzling splendour, and surrounded it with a glory, which can never shine on the efforts of rhetoric in a better-regulated community, and under a more sober dispensation of justice. The great exhibitions of eloquence were, 1st, In the civil and criminal causes tried before the Prætor, or judges appointed under his eye. 2d, The discussions on laws proposed in the assemblies of the people. 3d, The deliberations of the Senate. The Prætor sat in the Forum, the name given to the great square situated between Mount Palatine and the Capitol, and there administered justice. Sometimes he heard causes in the Basilicæ, or halls which were built around the Forum; but at other times the court of the Prætor was held in the area of the Forum, on which a tribunal was hastily erected, and a certain space for the patron, client, and witnesses, was railed off, and protected from the encroachment of surrounding spectators. This space was slightly covered above for the occasion with canvass, but being exposed to the air on all sides, the court was an open one, in the strictest sense of the term(308).