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7“Yet how much better it would be for you, too, to have been born Bambalio—if this Bambalio really exists—than to have taken up such a livelihood, in which it is absolutely inevitable that you should either sell your speech on behalf of the innocent, or else save the guilty also ! 2Yet you cannot do even this effectively, though you spent three years in Athens. When, then, did you ever do so? Or how could you? Why, you always come to the courts trembling, as if you were going to fight as a gladiator, and after uttering a few words in a meek and half-dead voice you take your departure, without having remembered a word of the speech you thought out at home before you came, and without having found anything to say on the spur of the moment. 3In making assertions and promises you surpass all mankind in audacity, but in the trials themselves, apart from reviling and abusing people, you are most weak and cowardly. Or do you think any one is ignorant of the fact that you never delivered one of those wonderful speeches of yours that you have published, but wrote them all out afterwards, like persons who fashion generals and cavalry leaders out of clay? 4If you doubt my word, remember how you accused Verres, though, to be sure, you did give him an example of your father’s trade—when you wetted your clothes.
“But I hesitate, for fear that in saying precisely what suits your case I may seem to be uttering words that are unbecoming to myself.
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