Advocacy in the legal order during the Roman period receives plentiful illumination in the traditional literary sources -

though their limitations, in milieu and in time, make it needful to supplement them from papyrology and epigraphy, as is being done here. There are the surviving examples of forensic advocacy, which, if complete speeches are wanted, boil down to Cicero et praeterea nihil, unless Apuleius’ Apologia be counted.

(1) The terminology used of advocates. A study of the two terms patronus and orator was published by Neuhauser in 1958,^[307] but it did not claim to treat systematically anything beyond the age of Cicero, and dealt with no other Latin terms nor any Greek ones. Neuhauser’s study is therefore of only limited utility for present purposes.^[308] Something, especially, must be added about the contribution of inscriptions, for they, like the papyri, have the useful characteristic of being at their most abundant after the Republican age and of relating predominantly to the provincial, and especially the Greek, part of the Roman world, to which justice must be done.

(2) The advocate as �representative’ of the client. To judge from what one reads in the books, the legal nature of that �representation’ is not entirely straightforward, and could do with clarification.

(3) The relationship of the schools of rhetoric, and of the controuersiae which were their standard engine of instruction, to the practical world and work of advocacy. That has often been discussed, and variously assessed. New editions, commentaries and translations have made the controuersiae easier to come to terms with than hitherto, justifying a brief reappraisal.

(4) Lastly, Quintilian as a source. The Institutes are a work of theory: how far are they also a practical manual? It will be argued that their relationship to the practice of the courts is stronger than scholars have been willing to allow, and their evidence by so much the more important.

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