M. Tullius Cicero, For Aulus Cluentius
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

There is also one other very great authority besides, which I had almost passed over in a shameful manner; for it is said to be my own. Attius read out of some oration or other, which he said was mine, a certain exhortation to the judges to judge honestly, and a certain mention of judicial decisions in other cases, which had not been approved of, and also of that very trial before Junius; just as if I had not said at the beginning of this defence, that had been a trial which had incurred great unpopularity; or as if, when I was discussing the discredit into which the courts of justice had fallen in some instances, I could possibly at that time pass over that one which was so notorious. [139] But I, if I said anything of that sort, did not mention it as a thing within my own knowledge, nor did I state it in evidence; and that speech was prompted rather by the occasion, than by my judgment and deliberate intention. For when I was acting as accuser, and had proposed to myself at the beginning to rouse the feelings of the Roman people and of the judges; and as I was mentioning all the errors of the courts of justice, relying not on my own opinion, but on the common report of men; I could not pass over that matter which had been so universally discussed. But whoever thinks that he has my positive opinions recorded indelibly in those orations which we have delivered in the courts of justice, is greatly mistaken. For all those speeches are speeches of the cause, and of the occasion, and are not the speeches of the men or of the advocates themselves. For if the causes themselves could speak for themselves, no one would employ an orator. But, as it is, we are employed, in order to say, not things which are to be considered as asserted on our own authority, but things which are derived from the circumstances of the cause itself. [140] They say that that able man, Marcus Antonius, was accustomed to say, “that he had never written a speech, in order that, if at any time he had said anything which was not desirable, he might be able to deny that he had said it.” Just as if whatever were said or pleaded by us was not retained in men's memories, if we did not ourselves commit it to writing.