an attorney or professional lawyer.  Round the apse or recess in which the court sits there will stand a ring of interested spectators, and among them will be distributed as many as possible of his own dependants, who will religiously applaud his finely-turned periods and his witticisms.  There was generally little chance of missing a Roman forensic witticism; its character was for the most part highly elaborate and its edge broad.  In a later generation it was not rare for chance bystanders to be hired on the spot as claqueurs.  The court itself consists of a large body of jurymen of position empanelled, not for the particular case, but for particular kinds of cases and for a period of time, and over these there presides one of the public officials annually elected for the judicial administration of Rome.  The president sees that the proceedings are in accordance with the law, but the verdict is given entirely by the jury.

[Illustration:  FIG. 64.—­SEALED RECEIPT OF JUCUNDUS.  Beside each seal is a signature; the writing in the hollow leaf is a summary of the receipt, which is itself shut between the two leaves bound with string.]

If there is no need for Silius to attend such a court, he may find many other demands upon his time.  Among Romans of the higher classes etiquette was extremely exacting.  Contemporaries themselves complain that social “duties” or “obligations” frittered away a large proportion of their day, and that they were kept perpetually “busy doing nothing.”  One man or woman is making a will, and asks you to be one of the witnesses to the signature and sealing; another is betrothing a son or daughter, and invites you to be present and attest the ceremony; another has a son of fifteen or sixteen concerning whom it is decided that he has now come of age, must put on the white toga of a man in the place of the purple-edged toga of the boy, and be led into the Forum in token of his new freedom; you must not omit the courtesy of attending.  Another desires you to go with him before the magistrate while he emancipates a slave.  Worst of all, perhaps, is the man who has written a poem or declamation, and who proposes to read it, or to get a professional elocutionist to read it, to his acquaintances.  He has either hired a hall or borrowed a convenient room from a friend, and you are kindly invited to be present.  We learn that these amateur authors did not permit their victims to forget the engagement, but sent them more than one reminder.  At the reading or recitation it was your duty to applaud frequently, to throw complimentary kisses, and to exclaim in Greek, “excellent,” “capital,” “clever,” “unapproachable,” or “again,” very much as we say “encore” in what we think is French, or “bravo” in Italian.  The native Latin terms most commonly in use may perhaps be translated as “well said,” “perfect,” “good indeed,” “divine,” “a shrewd hit.”  On one occasion a certain Priscus was present at the reading of a poem,