[8]
On the other hand in some cases the
accused may dispense with the statement of facts,
when for instance the charge can neither be denied
nor palliated, but turns solely on some point of law:
the following case will illustrate my meaning. A
man who has stolen from a temple money belonging
to a private individual is accused of sacrilege: in
such a case a confession will be more seemly than
a full statement of facts: “We do not deny that the
[p. 55]
money was taken from the temple; but the accuser
is bringing a false accusation in charging my client
with sacrilege, since the money was not consecrated,
but private property: it is for you to decide whether
under these circumstances sacrilege has been
committed.”
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.