do this best by recounting any
well known services which he has rendered to the state in general,
or any that he has done to his parents, or relations, or friends, or
kinsmen, or associates, or even any which are more remarkable or more
unusual, especially if they have been done with any extraordinary
labour, or danger, or both, or when there was no absolute necessity,
purely because it was his duty, or if he has done any great benefit to
the republic, or to his parents, or to any other of the people whom I
have just mentioned, and if, too, he can show that he has never been
so influenced by any covetousness as to abandon his duty, or to commit
any error of any description. And this statement will be the more
confirmed, if when it is said that he had an opportunity of doing
something which was not quite creditable with impunity, it can be
shown at the same time that he had no inclination to do it.

But this very kind of argument will be all the stronger if the person
on his trial can be shown to have been unimpeachable previously in
that particular sort of conduct of which he is now accused, as, for
instance, if he be accused of having done so and so for the sake
of avarice, and can be proved to have been all his life utterly
indifferent to the acquisition of money. On this indignation may be
expressed with great weight, united with a complaint that it is a most
miserable thing, and it may be argued that it is a most scandalous
thing, to think that that was the man's motive, when his disposition
during the whole of his life has been as unlike it as possible. Such a
motive often harries audacious men into guilt, but it has no power to
impel an upright man to sin. It is unjust, moreover, and injurious to
every virtuous man, that a previously well-spent life should not be of
the greatest possible advantage to a man at such a time, but that a
decision should be come to with reference only to a sudden accusation
which can be got up in a hurry, and with no reference to a man's
previous course of life, which cannot be extemporised to suit an
occasion, and which cannot be altered by any means.

But if there have been any acts of baseness in his previous life, or
if they be said to have undeservedly acquired such a reputation, or if
his actions are to be attributed by the envy, or love of detraction,
or mistaken opinion of some people, either to ignorance, or necessity,
or to the persuasion of young men, or to any other affect