[8]
But just as the authority of the speaker
carries greatest weight, if his undertaking of the case
is free from all suspicion of meanness, personal spite
or ambition, so also we shall derive some silent support
from representing that we are weak, unprepared, and
no match for the powerful talents arrayed against us,
a frequent trick in the exordia of Messala.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.