[40]
There was another
advocate who was defending a woman who thought
to secure a great effect by producing the portrait of
her husband, but sent the court into repeated
peals of laughter. For the persons entrusted with
the duty of handing in the portrait had no idea
[p. 409]
of the nature of a peroration and displayed it whenever the advocate looked their way, and when at last
it was produced at the proper moment it destroyed
all the good effect of his previous eloquence by its
hideousness, for it was a wax cast taken from an old
man's corpse.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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