have the civil law established in such a way that that man is sure to lose his cause who does not conduct it as he ought.  So that those actions greatly depend on the state of the law.  For there the exceptions are demanded, and an opportunity is allowed of conducting the cause in some manner, and every formula of private actions is arranged.  But in actual trials they occur less frequently, and yet, if they ever do occur at all, they are such that by themselves they have less strength, but they are confirmed by the assumption of some other statement in addition to them.  As in a certain trial which took place “When a certain person had been prosecuted for poisoning, and, because he was also accused of parricide, the trial was ordered to proceed out of its regular order, when in the accusation some charges were corroborated by witnesses and arguments, but the parricide was barely mentioned, it was proper for the advocate for the defence to dwell much and long on this circumstance, as, nothing whatever was proved respecting the death of the accused person’s parent, and therefore that it was a scandalous thing to inflict that punishment on him which is inflicted on parricides, but that that must inevitably be the case if he were convicted, since that it is added as one of the counts of the indictment, and since it is on that account that the trial has been ordered to be taken out of its regular order.  Therefore if it is not right that that punishment should be inflicted on the criminal, it is also not right that he should be convicted, since that punishment must inevitably follow a conviction.”  Here the advocate for the defence, by bringing the commutation of the punishment into his speech, according to the transferable class of topics, will invalidate the whole accusation.  But he will also confirm the alteration by a conjectural statement of the case when employed in defending his client on the other charges.

XX But we may give an example of translation in a cause, in this way—­When certain armed men had come for the purpose of committing violence, and armed men were also prepared on the other side, and when one of the armed men with his sword cut off the hand of a certain Roman knight who resisted his violence, the man whose hand had been cut off brings an action for the injury.  The man against whom the action is brought pleads a demurrer before the praetor, without there being any prejudice to a man on trial for his life.  The man who brings the action demands a trial on the simple fact, the man against whom the action is brought says that a demurrer ought to be added.  The question is—­“Shall the demurrer be allowed or not?” The reason is—­“No, for it is not desirable in an action for damages that there should be any prejudged decision of a crime, such as is the subject of inquiry when assassins are on their trial.”  The arguments intended to invalidate this reason are—­“The injuries are such that it is a shame that a decision should not be come to as early as possible.”