1You urge me to recite my speech to a larger group of friends. 1I shall do so because you urge it, although I have strong doubts. 2For it does not escape me that speeches, when they are recited, lose all their force and warmth, and almost their very name, since what usually commends and at the same time kindles them is the bench of judges, the crowd of advocates, the suspense about the outcome, the reputation of more than one speaker, and the partisanship of the audience divided between the sides, besides the speaker's gestures, his stride, his moving about too, and a vigour of the body matching every emotion of the mind.
3Hence it happens that those who plead seated, although they keep for the most part all the same advantages as those who stand, are nevertheless weakened, as it were, and depressed by the very fact that they sit. 4And those who recite are hampered in the chief aids of delivery, the eyes and the hands. 4So it is less surprising if the attention of listeners flags, when it is neither captured by any charms nor roused by any stings from outside. 5Add to this that the speech of which I am speaking is combative and, as it were, contentious. 5Moreover, nature has so arranged it that we think what we have written with labour will also be listened to with labour.
6And indeed how few listeners are so upright that they are not delighted rather by these sweet and sonorous things than by what is austere and compressed? 6This discord is altogether shameful, but it exists, since it generally happens that listeners demand one thing and judges another, although otherwise a listener ought to be affected most by those things by which, if he were a judge, he would be most moved. 7It may happen, however, that in spite of these difficulties novelty may recommend this book – novelty among our countrymen; 7for among the Greeks there is something, though from a different direction, still not altogether unlike it. 8For just as it was their custom to refute laws, which they charged as contrary to earlier laws, by comparison with others, so I had to establish that what we were demanding was contained in the law on extortion, both from that law itself and from others; 8and this, though not at all pleasing to the ears of the unskilled, ought to find all the more favour among the learned, the less it finds among the unlearned.
9If I decide to recite, I shall invite all the most learned people. 9But examine carefully with yourself whether I should recite at all, and set out all the counters I have moved on either side, and choose the side on which reason has won. 9For reason will be required of you; my compliance will excuse me. 9Farewell.