o themselves pay great attention to melody and letters and measures,
do not think it wrong for others to neglect what is right in
magistracies and judicial sentences and business generally. One must
therefore deal with them in the following manner. Does an orator ask a
favour of you when you are acting as juryman, or a demagogue when you
are sitting in council? Say you will grant his request if he first utter
a solecism, or introduce a barbarism into his speech; he will refuse
because of the shame that would attach itself to him; at any rate we see
some that will not in a speech let two vowels come together. If again
some illustrious and distinguished person importune you to something
bad, bid him come into the market-place dancing or making wry faces, and
if he refuse you will have an opportunity to speak, and ask him which is
more disgraceful, to utter a solecism and make wry faces, or to violate
the law and one's oath, and contrary to justice to do more for a bad
than for a good man. Nicostratus the Argive, when Archidamus offered him
a large sum of money and any Lacedaemonian bride he chose if he would
deliver up Cromnum, said Archidamus could not be a descendant of
Hercules, for he travelled about and killed evil-doers, whereas
Archidamus tried to make evil-doers of the good. In like manner, if a
man of good repute tries to force and importune us to something bad, let
us tell him that he is acting in an ignoble way, and not as his birth
and virtue would warrant.

Sec. XVII. But in the case of people of no repute you must see whether you
can persuade the miser by your importunity to lend you money without a
bond, or the proud man to yield you the better place, or the ambitious
man to surrender some office to you when he might take it himself. For
truly it would seem monstrous that, while such remain firm and
inflexible and unmoveable in their vicious propensities, we who wish to
be, and profess to be, men of honour and justice should be so little
masters of ourselves as to abandon and betray virtue. For indeed, if
those who importune us do it for glory and power, it is absurd that we
should adorn and aggrandize others only to get infamy and a bad name
ourselves; like unfair umpires in the public games, or like people
voting only to ingratiate themselves, and so bestowing improperly
offices and prizes[671] and glory on others, while they rob themselves
of respect and fair fame. And if we see that the person who import