ON THE OFFICE AND CHARACTER OF A JUDGE
IX. (55) The law thinks that all those who adhere to the sacred constitution, established by Moses, ought to be free from all unreasonable passions, and from all wickedness; and most especially ought all men to be so, who are either appointed by lot or elected to judge between others; for it is an absurdity for these men to be themselves liable to the imputation of error, who undertake to dispense justice to others, whom it becomes to give a faithful copy of the works of nature, presenting an accurate representation of a model picture; (56) for as the power of fire which disperses warmth to all other things which it reaches, was, long before doing so, warm as far as it was itself concerned, and as, on the contrary, the power of snow cools other things, by the fact of its being itself cooled previously, so also ought the judge to be full of pure unalloyed justice, if he is to irrigate all who come before him with justice, in order that from him, as from a sweet fountain, a wholesome spring may be afforded to all who thirst for a dispensation of good law. (57) And this will be the case of any one who undertakes the office of a judge looks upon it as if he were at the same time judging and being judged himself, and when he takes up the pebble with which he is to give his vote, were at the same time to take up wisdom so as not to be deceived, and justice so as to dispense to each party what they deserve, and courage so as never to yield to supplications or to feelings of compassion, so as to diminish the punishment due to convicted offenders; (58) for the man who studies these virtues may reasonably be looked upon as a common benefactor, like a good pilot tranquillising the storms of affairs in such a manner as to secure the preservation and safety of those who have committed their interests to him.
X. (59) In the first place the law enjoins the judge not to listen to vain Reports.{9}{#ex 23:1.} Why is this? The law says, “My good man, let thy ears be purified.” And they will be purified if they are continually washed out with a stream of virtuous language, never admitting the long, and false, and vain, and hackneyed protestations, so deserving to be ridiculed, of fabulists or vain babblers, or hyperbolical exaggerations, who make a great deal of things of no importance; (60) and this is what is meant by the injunction not to listen to vain reports, and also by another precept in some degree consistent with the former. For, says the lawgiver, he who attends to those who give evidence on hearsay is attending to vanity and not to sound reason because the eyes do indeed dwell with the very things which are done, taking hold of them as one may say, and comprehending and seizing upon them in all their parts, the light co-operating with them, by means of which all things are illuminated and clearly proved; but the ears, as one of the philosophers of old has very truly said, are less trustworthy than the eyes, inasmuch as they are not themselves present at the transactions, but are attracted by words as the interpreter of facts, which are not always disposed to tell the truth; (61) for which reasons some of the lawgivers among the Greeks, having transcribed some of the laws from the two tables of Moses, appear to have established very wise regulations, forbidding any one to mention in his testimony anything that he has heard, on the ground that it is right to look upon what a man has seen as trustworthy, but on what he has heard as not in all respects certain.
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