whose character is such as to give rise to suspicion; or of his having been seen himself in that very place in which the action was done; or paleness, or tremor, or any writing, or anything having been sealed up or deposited anywhere.  For these are circumstances of such a nature as to make the charge full of suspicion, either in connexion with the act itself, or with the time previous or subsequent to it.  And if they are not so, still it will be proper to rely on the causes themselves, and on the means which the accused person had of doing the action, with the addition of that general argument, that he was not so insane as to be unable to avoid or conceal any indications of the action, so as to be discovered and to give ground for an accusation.  On the other hand, there is that common topic, that audacity is joined to rashness, not to prudence.  Besides, there comes the topic suited to amplification, that we are not to wait for his confessing; that offences are proved by arguments; and here, too, precedents will be adduced.  And thus much about arguments.

XXXIV.  But if there is also a sufficiency of witnesses, the first thing will be to praise the party accused, and to say that he himself has taken care not to be convicted by argument; that he could not escape from witnesses:  then each of the witnesses must be praised, (and we have stated already what are the things for which people can be praised;) and in the next place, it must be urged that it is possible for it to be quite justifiable not to yield to a specious argument, (inasmuch as such an one is often false,) but quite impossible to refuse belief to a good and trusty man, unless there is some fault in the judge.  And then, too, if the witnesses are obscure or insignificant, we must say that a man’s credit is not to be estimated by his fortune, but that those are the most trustworthy witnesses on every point who have the easiest means of knowing the truth of the matter under discussion.  If the fact of an examination of slaves under torture having taken place, or a demand that such should take place, will assist the cause, then in the first place the general character of such examinations must be extolled:  we must speak of the power of bodily pain; of the opinion of our ancestors, who would certainly have abolished the whole system if they had not approved of it; of the customs of the Athenians and Rhodians, very wise men, among whom (and that is a most terrible thing) even freemen and citizens are tortured; of the principles also of the most prudent of our own countrymen, who though they are unwilling to allow slaves to be examined against their masters, still did allow of such examination in the case of incest and conspiracy,—­and in fact such an examination took place in my consulship.  That declamation which men are in the habit of using to throw discredit on such examinations must be laughed out of court, and called studied and childish.  Then a belief must be inculcated that the examination has been conducted with care, and without any partiality; and the answers given in the examination must be weighed by arguments and by conjecture.  And these are for the most part the divisions of an accusation.