For L. Murena (66-70)

Very true, unless some other sounder opinion convinces you. That great

Wherefore, to return to the subject which I began to speak of; take away the name of Cato out of the cause; remove and leave out of the question all mention of authority, which in courts of justice ought either to have no influence at all, or only influence to contribute to someone's safety; and discuss with me the charges themselves. What do you accuse him of, Cato? What action of his is it that you bring before the court? What is your charge? Do you accuse him of bribery? I do not defend bribery. You blame me because you say I am defending the very conduct which I brought in a law to punish. I punished bribery, not innocence. And any real ease of bribery I will join you in prosecuting if you please. You have said that a resolution of the senate was passed, on my motion, “that if any men who had been bribed had gone to meet the candidates, if any hired men followed them, if places were given men to see the shows of gladiators according to their tribes, and also, if dinners were given to the common people, that appeared to be a violation of the Calpurnian law.” Therefore the senate decides that these things were done in violation of the Calpurnian law if they were done at all it decides what there is not the least occasion for out of complaisance for the candidates. For there is a great question whether such things have been done or not. That if they have been done, they were done in violation of the law, no one can doubt.

It is, therefore ridiculous to leave that uncertain which was doubtful but to give a positive decision on that point which can be doubtful to no one. And that decree is passed at the request of all the candidates; in order that it might be quite impossible to make out from the resolution of the senate whose interests were consulted, or against whose interests it was passed. Prove, then, that these actions have been done by Lucius Murena and then I will grant to you that they have been done in violation of the law.

What then? Suppose I were even to add, what there would be nothing unusual in, that many had been asked to go? Would that be matter of accusation, or at all strange, that in a city in which we, when we are asked, often come to escort the sons of even the lowest rank, almost before the night is over, from the furthest part of the city, men should not mind going at the third hour into the Campus Martius, especially when they have been invited in the name of such a man as Murena? What then? What if all the societies had come to meet him, of which bodies many are sitting here as judges? What if many men of our own most honourable order had come? What then? What if the whole of that most officious body of candidates, which will not suffer any man to enter the city except in an honourable manner, had come, or even our prosecutor himself—if Postumius had come to meet him with a numerous crowd of his dependents? What is there strange in such a multitude? I say nothing of his clients, his neighbours, his tribesmen, or the whole army of Lucullus, which, just at that time, had come to Rome to his triumph; I say

“But a great many people followed him.” Prove that it was for hire, and I will admit that that was a crime: but if the fact of hire be absent, what is there that you object to?