And, even if no one were to answer you, yet you would not, as I think, be able to state
 and prove even the cause itself. Do you now never give it a thought, that you will have
 a contest with a most eloquent man, and one in a perfect state of preparation for
 speaking, with whom you will at one time have to argue, and at another time to strive
 and contend against him with all your might? Whose abilities indeed I praise greatly,
 but not so as to be afraid of them, and think highly of, thinking however at the same
 time that I am more easily to be pleased by them than cajoled by them. 
 He will never put me down by his acuteness; he will never put me out
 of countenance by any artifice; he will never attempt to upset and dispirit me by
 displays of his genius. I know all the modes of attack and every system of speaking the
 man has. We have often been employed on the same, often on opposite sides. Ingenious as
 he is, he will plead against me as if he were aware that his own ability is to same
 extent put on its trial. But as for you, O Caecilius, I think that I see already how he will play with you, how
 he will bandy you about; how often he will give you power and option of choosing which
 alternative you please,—whether a thing were done or not, whether a thing be true or
 false; and whichever side you take will be contrary to your interest. What a heat you
 will be in, what bewilderment! what darkness, O ye immortal gods! will overwhelm the
 man, free from malice as he is. What will you do when he begins to divide the different
 counts of your accusation, and to arrange on his fingers each separate division of the
 cause? What will you do when he begins to deal with each argument, to disentangle it, to
 get rid of it? You yourself in truth will begin to be afraid lest you have brought an
 innocent man into danger. What will you do when he begins to pity his client, to complain, and to take off some
 of his unpopularity from him and transfer it to you? to speak of the close connection
 necessarily subsisting between the quaestor and the praetor? of the custom of the
 ancients? of the holy nature of the connection between those to whom the same province
 was by lot appointed? Will you be able to encounter the odium such a speech will excite
 against you? Think a moment; consider again and again. For there seems to me to be
 danger of his overwhelming you not with words only, but of his blunting the edge of your
 genius by the mere gestures and motions of his body, and so distracting you and leading
 you away from every previous thought and purpose.