[17]
In the last resort we may plead for mercy, a though
most writers deny that this is ever admissible in the
courts.1 Indeed Cicero himself seems to support
this view in his defence of Quintus Ligarius where
he says, “I have pleaded many causes, Caesar, some
of them even in association with yourself, so long as
your political ambitions prevented you from abandoning the bar, but never have I pleaded in words such
as these, ' Forgive him, gentlemen, he erred, he
made a slip, he did not think that it mattered, he
will never do it again,'” and so on.
1 Pro Lig. X. 30.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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