Note 834 — Chapter XII · THE STATE (C) PHILOSOPHY OF POLITICS

Extortion and corruption were the usual charges. As in those days these things were identical with politics, and the judges and plaintiffs had acted precisely in the same way as the defendants, the art consisted in using the forms of a well-acted ethical passion to cover a party speech, of which the real import was only comprehensible to the initiated. This corresponds entirely with the modern parliamentary usage. The “people” would be very much astonished to see party opponents, after delivering wild speeches in the chamber (for the reporters) chatting together in the lobbies, or to be told how a party passionately champions a proposal after it has made certain by agreement with the other side that it will not be passed. In Rome, too, the judgment was not the important thing in these “trials”; it was enough if a defendant voluntarily left the city and so retired from the occupancy of, or candidature for, office.