er he
was going to speak, drew together a vast concourse of people from the
whole of Greece, who assembled for the sake of hearing him; and
Callistratus, who, when summing up his noble pleading on the subject of
Oropus in Euboea, produced such an impression that that same
Demosthenes quitted the academy, at the time when Plato was at its head,
to become his follower. And Hyperides, and AEschines, and Andocides, and
Dinarchus, and Antiphon the Rhamnusian, who is the first man spoken of
in ancient history as having received a fee for pleading a cause.

6. And similarly among the Romans, the Rutilii, and Galbae, and Scauri,
men of eminent reputation for purity of life and manners, and for
frugality; and in the succeeding generations, many men of censorian and
consular rank, and even many who had celebrated triumphs, such as the
Crassi, the Antonii, the Philipii, the Scaevolae, and numbers of others,
after having commanded armies with glory, gained victories, and raised
trophies, became eminent also for their civil services to the State, and
won fresh laurels by their noble contests at the bar, thus reaping the
highest honour and glory.

7. And after them Cicero, the most excellent of them all, who repeatedly
saved many who were in distress from the scorching flames of judgment by
the stream of his imperious eloquence, used to affirm "that if men could
not be defended without their advocate incurring blame, they certainly
could not be carelessly defended without his being guilty of crime."

8. But now throughout all the regions of the East one may see the most
violent and rapacious classes of men hovering about the courts of law,
and besieging the houses of the rich like Spartan or Cretan hounds,
cunningly pursuing different traces, in order to create the occasion of
a lawsuit.

9. Of these the chief is that tribe of men who, sowing every variety of
strife and contest in thousands of actions, wear out the doorposts of
widows and the thresholds of orphans, and create bitter hatred among
friends, relations, or connections, who have any disagreement, if they
can only find the least pretext for a quarrel. And in these men, the
progress of age does not cool their vices as it does those of others,
but only hardens and strengthens them. And amid all their plunder they
are insatiable and yet poor, whetting the edge of their genius in order
by their crafty orations to catch the ear of the judges, though the very
title of those m