1I have frequent arguments with a certain learned and experienced man, who likes nothing so much in pleading cases as brevity. 2I admit that it ought to be kept to, if the case permits: otherwise it is a betrayal of one's client to pass over what should be said, and a betrayal too to touch hastily and briefly on what ought to be driven home, fixed in the mind and repeated. 3For to most points a certain force and weight is added by longer treatment, and as a sword is driven into the body, so a speech is driven into the mind, not so much by the blow as by its staying there.
4Here he argues with me from authorities, and from the Greeks he shows me the speeches of Lysias, from our own those of the Gracchi and Cato, very many of which are certainly clipped and brief: I set against Lysias Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides and many others besides, against the Gracchi and Cato Pollio, Caesar, Caelius, and above all Marcus Tullius, whose best speech is said to be his longest. 4And by Hercules, just as with other good things, so a good book is the better the bigger it is. 5You see how statues, images and paintings, and indeed the figures of men and many animals, and even of trees, if only they are handsome, are recommended by nothing more than size.
5The same thing happens with speeches; 5indeed, size lends a certain authority and beauty even to the book-rolls themselves. 6These points and many others which I usually make to the same effect he, being elusive and slippery in argument, evades by contending that these very men on whose speeches I rely spoke less than they published. 7I think the opposite. 7Witness the many speeches of many orators, and Cicero's for Murena and for Varenus, in which a brief and bare summary, as it were, of certain charges is indicated by headings alone. 7From these it is clear that he said a great deal which he left out when he published.
8He also says that in defending Cluentius he pleaded the whole case alone, according to the old practice, and that in defending Gaius Cornelius he spoke for four days, so that we cannot doubt that what he said at greater length over several days (as was necessary) he later cut down and pruned and compressed into one book, a large one indeed, but still one. 9'But a good pleading is one thing, a good speech another.' 9I know that some think so, but I (perhaps I am mistaken) am convinced that it can happen that a pleading is good which is not a good speech, but that a pleading cannot fail to be good which is a good speech.
9For the speech is the model of the pleading and, as it were, its archetype. 10That is why in all the best speeches we find a thousand impromptu figures, even in those which we know were only published, as in the speech against Verres: 'An artist — who? 10who was it? 10you remind me rightly; 10they said it was Polyclitus.' 10It follows, then, that the most perfect pleading is the one which most closely reproduces the likeness of a speech, provided only that it is given its just and due time; 10and if this is refused, the fault is not at all the orator's but very much the judge's. 11The laws support this opinion of mine, which grant the most ample time and urge on speakers not brevity but fullness, that is, thoroughness; 11and brevity cannot provide this except in the narrowest cases.
12I shall add what experience, an excellent teacher, has taught me. 12I have often pleaded, often judged, often sat on a council: different things move different people, and very often small matters carry the greatest weight. 12Men's judgements vary, and so do their inclinations. 12Hence those who have heard the same case together often think differently, and sometimes the same, but from different impulses of the mind. 13Besides, each man favours his own discovery, and embraces as the strongest point what he himself foresaw, when it is put forward by another. 13Everyone, then, must be given something to hold on to, something to recognise. 14Regulus once said to me, when we were appearing together: 'You think everything in a case must be followed up; 14I see the throat at once, and I press on that.' 14He presses, certainly, on what he has chosen, but in choosing he often goes wrong.
15I replied that it might happen that it was a knee or an ankle where he thought it was the throat. 15'But I,' I said, 'who cannot perceive the throat, test everything, try everything, in short leave no stone unturned; 16and just as in farming I tend and work not only vineyards but also orchards, and not only orchards but also fields, and as in the fields themselves I sow not only spelt or wheat but barley, beans and other pulses, so in pleading I scatter many seeds, as it were, more widely, so as to gather whatever comes up. 17For the minds of judges are no less impenetrable, uncertain and deceptive than the weather and the soil.' 17Nor am I unaware that the supreme orator Pericles is praised in this way by the comic poet Eupolis: 'And besides his speed, a kind of Persuasion sat upon his lips.
18But to this very Pericles neither that 'persuasion' nor that 'he charmed' would have come through brevity or speed or both (for they are different) without the highest ability. 18For to delight and to persuade requires fullness of speech and time, and only he can leave a sting in the minds of his hearers who does not merely prick but drives it in. 19Add what the other comic poet said about the same Pericles: 'He lightened, he thundered, he threw Greece into confusion.' For it is not a lopped and curtailed speech but a broad, magnificent and lofty one that thunders and lightens, and in short throws everything into turmoil and confusion.
20'Yet moderation is best': who denies it? 20but the man who falls short of his subject fails to observe moderation no less than the man who goes beyond it, the one who speaks too tightly no less than the one who speaks too expansively. 21And so you often hear, just as you hear the one, 'immoderately and redundantly', so the other, 'thinly and feebly'. 21One is said to have gone beyond his material, the other not to have filled it. 21Both err equally, but the one through weakness, the other through strength; 21which is certainly the fault of a greater, if not a more polished, talent. 22Nor, when I say this, do I approve that Homeric man of unmeasured words, but this one: 'and his words like the snowflakes of winter', not because that other does not also please me exceedingly: 'few words, but very clear'; yet if I am given the choice, I want that speech which is like winter snows, that is, frequent and unceasing but also abundant, in short divine and heavenly.
23'But a short pleading is more welcome to many.' 23It is, but to lazy people, whose fastidiousness and idleness it is ridiculous to respect as if they were judgement. 23For if you took these into consultation, it would be better not only to speak briefly but not to speak at all. 24This is my opinion so far, which I shall change if you disagree; 24but I do ask you to explain clearly why you disagree. 24For although I ought to yield to your authority, I think it more right, in so important a matter, to be overcome by reason than by authority. 25So, if I do not seem to you to be wrong, write just that, in as short a letter as you like, but still write (for you will confirm my judgement); 25if I am wrong, prepare a very long one.
25I have not bribed you, have I, by imposing on you the necessity of a short letter if you agreed with me, and of a very long one if you disagreed? 25Farewell.