the quaestor." The argument brought to invalidate that reason is,
"Still you ought to have discharged the duty which was entrusted to
you by the public authority." The question for the decision of the
judges is, "Whether, as the money which ought to have been supplied
from the public treasury was not furnished to those men who were
appointed ambassadors, they were nevertheless bound to discharge the
duties of their embassy." In this class of inquiry, as in all the
other kinds, it will be desirable to see if anything can be assumed,
either from a conjectural statement of the case, or from any other
kind of statement. And after that, many arguments can be brought to
bear on this question, both from comparison, and from the transference
of the guilt to other parties.

But the prosecutor will, in the first place, if he can, defend the man
through whose fault the accused person says that that action was done;
and if he cannot, he will declare that the fault of the other party
has nothing to do with this trial, but only the fault of this man whom
he himself is accusing. Afterwards he will say that it is proper for
every one to consider only what is his own duty; and that if the one
party did wrong, that was no reason for the other doing wrong too. And
in the next place, that if the other man has committed a fault, he
ought to be accused separately as this man is, and that the accusation
of the one is not to be mixed up with the defence of the other.

But when the advocate for the defence has dealt with the other
arguments, if any arise out of other statements of the case, he will
argue in this way with reference to the transference of the charge to
other parties. In the first place, he will point out to whose fault
it was owing that the thing happened; and in the next place, as it
happened in consequence of the fault of some one else, he will point
out that he either could not or ought not to have done what the
prosecutor says he ought: that he could not, will be considered with
reference to the particulars of expediency, in which the force of
necessity is involved; that he ought not, with reference to the
honourableness of the proceeding. We will consider each part more
minutely when talking of the deliberative kind of argument. Then
he will say, that everything was done by the accused person which
depended on his own power; that less was done than ought to have been,
was the consequence of the fault of another person. Aft