agistrates is derived from the name of Justice.

10. In the pertinacity of these men rashness assumes the disguise of
freedom--headlong audacity seeks to be taken for constancy, and an empty
fluency of language usurps the name of eloquence--by which perverse
arts, as Cicero tells us, it is a shame for the holy gravity of a judge
be deceived. For he says, "And as nothing in a republic ought to be so
incorruptible as a suffrage or a sentence, I do not understand why the
man who corrupts such things with money is to be esteemed worthy of
punishment, while he who perverts them by eloquence receives
commendation. In fact, the latter appears to me to do the most harm, it
being worse to corrupt a judge by a speech than by a bribe, inasmuch as
no one can corrupt a wise man with a bribe, though it is possible that
he may with eloquence."

11. There is a second class of those men who, professing the science of
the law, especially the interpretation of conflicting and obsolete
statutes, as if they had a bridle placed in their mouths, keep a
resolute silence, in which they rather resemble their shadows than
themselves. These, like those men who cast nativities or interpret the
oracles of the sibyl, compose their countenances to a sort of gravity,
and then make money of their supine drowsiness.

12. And that they may appear to have a more profound knowledge of the
laws, they speak of Trebatius,[185] and Cascellius, and Alfenus, and of
the laws of the Aurunci and Sicani, which have long become obsolete, and
have been buried ages ago with the mother of Evander. And if you should
pretend to have deliberately murdered your mother, they will promise you
that there are many cases recorded in abstruse works which will secure
your acquittal, if you are rich enough to pay for it.

13. There is a third class of these men, who, to arrive at distinction
in a turbulent profession, sharpen their mercenary mouths to mystify the
truth, and by prostituting their countenances and their vile barking,
work their way with the public. These men, whenever the judge is
embarrassed and perplexed, entangle the matter before him with further
difficulties, and take pains to prevent any arrangement, carefully
involving every suit in knotty subtleties. When these courts, however,
go on rightly, they are temples of equity; but when they are perverted
they are hidden and treacherous pitfalls, and if any person falls into
them, he will not escape till after many