Horatius killed his sister." This simple proposition makes known the
whole crime, but the details and the cause of the fact will suit better
the defendant. Let it be supposed, on the other hand, that the fact can
not be denied or excused; then the defendant, instead of narrating, will
best abide by the question of right. Some one is accused of sacrilege
for stealing the money of a private person out of a temple. The pleader
of the cause had better confess the fact than give an account of it. "We
do not deny that this money was taken out of the temple. It was the
money of a private person, and not set apart for any religious use. But
the plaintiff calumniates us by an action for sacrilege. It is,
therefore, your business, gentlemen, to decide whether it can properly
be specified as sacrilege."


THE TWO KINDS OF NARRATION

There are two kinds of narration in judicial matters, the one for the
cause, the other for things belonging to it. "I have not killed that
man." This needs no narration. I admit it does not; but there may be a
narration, and even somewhat long, concerning the probable causes of
innocence in the accused, as his former integrity of life, the
opponent's motives for endangering the life of a guiltless person, and
other circumstances arguing the incredibility of the accusation. The
accuser does not merely say, "You have committed that murder," but shows
reasons to evince its credibility; as, in tragedies, when Teucer imputes
the death of Ajax to Ulysses, he says that "He was found in a lonely
place, near the dead body of his enemy, with his sword all bloody."
Ulysses, in answer, not only denies the crime, but protests there was
no enmity between him and Ajax, and that they never contended but for
glory. Then he relates how he came into that solitary place, how he