Why need you ask a man questions,
 Laelius, who, even before you have pronounced the words “I ask you,” will pour out more
 assertions than you enjoined him before you left home? And why should I, the counsel for the
 defence, ask him questions, since the course to be taken with respect to witnesses is either to
 invalidate their testimony or to impeach their characters? But by what discussion can I refute
 the evidence of men who say “We gave,” and no more? Am I then to make a speech against the man,
 when my speech can find no room for argument? What can I say against an utter stranger? I must
 then be content with complaining and lamenting, as I have been some time doing, the general
 iniquity of the whole prosecution, and, in the first place, the whole class of witnesses; for
 that nation is the witness which is the least scrupulous of all in giving evidence. I come
 nearer;—I say that that is not evidence which you yourself call decrees; but that it is only the
 grumbling of needy men, and a sort of random movement of a miserable Greek 
 assembly. I will come in still further,—he who has done it is not present; he who is said to
 have paid the money is not brought hither; no private letters are produced; the public documents
 have been retained in the power of the prosecutors. The main point of my argument concerns the
 witnesses. These men are living with our enemies, they come into court with our adversaries,
 they are dwelling in the same house with our prosecutors. Do
 you think that this is an examination and an inquiry into the truth, or an endeavour to fix a
 stain, and bring ruin upon innocence? for there are many things of such a sort, O judges, that
 even if they deserve to be neglected, as far as the individual whom they more immediately affect
 is concerned, are still to be dreaded, because of the state of facts of which they betoken the
 existence, and because of the precedents which they afford. 
 If I were defending a man of the lowest rank, of no splendour of reputation, and recommended
 by no innocence of character, still, relying on the rights of common humanity and mercy, I
 should beg from citizens, on behalf of another citizen, that you would not give up your
 fellow-citizen and your suppliant to witnesses who are strangers to you; who are urged on to
 give their evidence; who are the companions, and messmates, and comrades of the prosecutor; to
 men who from their fickleness are Greeks, but who, as far as cruelty goes, are barbarians: I
 should entreat you not to leave posterity so dangerous a precedent for their imitation.