But even suppose those documents were not tampered
 with in their own city, still what authority or what credit can they now have here? The law
 orders them to be brought to the praetor within three days, and to be sealed up with the seals
 of the judges; they are scarcely brought within thirty days. In order that the writings may not
 be easily tampered with, therefore the law orders that after they have been sealed up they shall
 be kept in a public office; but these are sealed up after they have been tampered with. What
 difference, then, does it make, whether they are brought to the judges so long after the proper
 time, or whether they are not brought at all? 
 What shall we say if the zeal of the witnesses is in partnership, as it were, with the
 prosecutor? shall they still be considered witnesses? What then, is become of that expectation
 which ought to have a place in courts of justice? For formerly, when a prosecutor had said
 anything with bitterness and vehemence, and when the counsel for the defence had made a
 supplicatory and submissive reply, the third step expected was the appearance of the witnesses
 who either spoke without any partisanship at all, or else they in some degree concealed their
 desires. But what is the case here? They are sitting with the
 prosecutor; they rise up from the prosecutor's bench; they use no concealment; they feel no
 apprehension. Do I complain of where they sit? They come with him from his house, if they trip
 at one word, they will have no place to return to. Can any one be a witness, when the prosecutor
 can examine him without any anxiety and have not the slightest fear of his giving him any answer
 which he is unwilling to hear? Where, then, is the oratorical skill, which formerly used to be
 looked for either in the prosecutor or in the counsel for the defence? “He examined the witness
 cleverly; he came up to him cunningly; he scolded him; he led him where he pleased; he convicted
 him and made him dumb.”