purpose of avoiding any
greater inconvenience, or of obtaining any more important advantage;
or if any advantage is passed by for the sake of obtaining some
other still greater advantage, or of avoiding some more important
disadvantage.

This topic is as it were a sort of foundation of this statement of the
case; for nothing that is done is approved of by any one unless some
reason be shown why it has been done. Therefore the accuser, when he
says that anything has been done in compliance with some impulse,
ought to exaggerate that impulse, and any other agitation or affection
of the mind, with all the power of language and variety of sentiments
of which he is master, and to show how great the power of love is, how
great the agitation of mind which arises from anger, or from any one
of those causes which he says was that which impelled any one to do
anything. And here we must take care, by an enumeration of examples of
men who have done anything under the influence of similar impulse, and
by a collation of similar cases, and by an explanation of the way in
which the mind itself is affected, to hinder its appearing marvellous
if the mind of a man has been instigated by such influence to some
pernicious or criminal action.

VI. But when the orator says that any one has done such and such
an action, not through impulse, but in consequence of deliberate
reasoning, he will then point out what advantage he has aimed at,
or what inconvenience he has avoided, and he will exaggerate the
influence of those motives as much as he can, so that as far as
possible the cause which led the person spoken of to do wrong, may
appear to have been an adequate one. If it was for the sake of glory
that he did so and so, then he will point out what glory he thought
would result from it; again, if he was influenced by desire of power,
or riches, or by friendship, or by enmity; and altogether whatever the
motive was, which he says was his inducement to the action, he will
exaggerate as much as possible.

And he is bound to give great attention to this point, not only what
the effect would have been in reality, but still more what it would
have been in the opinion of the man whom he is accusing. For it makes
no difference that there really was or was not any advantage or
disadvantage, if the man who is accused believed that there would or
would not be such. For opinion deceives men in two ways, when either
the matter itself is of a different