Writing Exercise
That which must most greatly be wished for, justices, and which alone can provide redress from this grievance, lies within your capable hands alone. We who stand before you are powerless to effect the change we require; we have no robes imparted with righteousness by the most glorious pontifex, he whose authority solely supersedes yours; we lack the venerable age and experience by which you attain your position and maintain it, season after season; but this at least we may be said to possess: the feeling, nay, the common decency, to rise up against the indiscretions of a felonious man nearly in your midst, who requires but the common vote and your benediction to become one of you.
I disdain to name him before our assemblage - I do not wish to mobilize his paternity against me. I shall instead - with your beneficence, justices - merely recount his crimes, crimes which can be attested with evidence and witnesses and, most important of all, irredeemable links to the most basic elements of his character. This man, with the complicity of many an erstwhile ne'er-do-well, has nearly put the finishing touches on a governing body whose rule persists through fear and force alone; furthermore, this body, not content to exist alongside our most ancient and virtuous oligarchy, but waits for the election of this fraud to bring heavy and relentless hammerstrokes upon our edifice.
But I speak of things of which you are aware, justices, do I not? You merely lack the formal presentations to link this gallant hypocrite to these fearsome machinations. Take heed, and all will become clear.
An attempt to emulate Cicero somewhat. The first handful or so of words are from the beginnings of a translation of one of his works.
I disdain to name him before our assemblage - I do not wish to mobilize his paternity against me. I shall instead - with your beneficence, justices - merely recount his crimes, crimes which can be attested with evidence and witnesses and, most important of all, irredeemable links to the most basic elements of his character. This man, with the complicity of many an erstwhile ne'er-do-well, has nearly put the finishing touches on a governing body whose rule persists through fear and force alone; furthermore, this body, not content to exist alongside our most ancient and virtuous oligarchy, but waits for the election of this fraud to bring heavy and relentless hammerstrokes upon our edifice.
But I speak of things of which you are aware, justices, do I not? You merely lack the formal presentations to link this gallant hypocrite to these fearsome machinations. Take heed, and all will become clear.
An attempt to emulate Cicero somewhat. The first handful or so of words are from the beginnings of a translation of one of his works.