[19]
If this fails, we
must content ourselves with making it clear that he
is reluctant to tell what he knows, and lead him
with a view to tripping him up on some point or
other, even though it be irrelevant to the case; we
must also keep him in the witness-box for an unusual
length of time, so that by saying everything that can
be said and more than is necessary on behalf of the
accused, he may be rendered suspect to the judge.
Thus he will do the accused no less harm than if he
had told the truth against him.
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.