For L. Murena (71-75)

Do not then, O Cato, deprive the lower class of men of this power of showing their dutiful feelings; allow these men, who hope for everything from us, to have something also themselves, which they may be able to give us. If they have nothing beyond their own vote, that is but little; since they have no interest which they can exert in the votes of others. They themselves, as they are accustomed to say, cannot plead for us, cannot go bail for us, cannot invite us to their houses; but they ask all these things of us, and do not think that they can requite the services which they receive from us by anything but by their attentions of this sort. Therefore they resisted the Fabian law, which regulated the number of an escort and the resolution of the senate, which was passed in the consulship of Lucius Caesar. For there is no punishment which can prevent the regard shown by the poorer classes for this description of attention.

“But spectacles were exhibited to the people by their tribes, and crowds of the common people were invited to dinner.” Although this, O judges, was not done by Murena at all, but done in accordance with all usage and precedent by his friends, still, being reminded of the fact, I recollect how many votes these investigations held in the senate have lost us, O Servius. For what time was there ever, either within our own recollection or that of our fathers, in which this, whether you call it ambition or liberality, did not exist to the extent of giving a place in the circus and in the forum to one's friends, and to the men of one's own tribe? The men of the poorer classes first, who had not yet obtained from those of their own tribe ⋯

⋯ that the prefect of the carpenters [*] once gave a place to the men of his own tribe. What will they decide with respect to the eminent men who have erected regular stalls in the circus for the sake of their own tribesmen? All these charges of escort of spectacles of dinners, are brought forward by the multitude, O Servius, as proofs of your over-scrupulous diligence but still as to those counts of the indictment Murena is defended by the authority of the senate. And why not? Does the senate think it a crime to go to meet a man? No but it does, if it be done for a bribe. Prove that it was so. Does the senate think it a crime for many men to follow him? No, but it does, if they were hired. Prove it. Or to give a man a place to see the spectacles? or to ask a man to dinner? Not by any means; but to give every one a seat to ask everyone one meets to dinner. “What is every one?” Why, the whole body of citizens. It then, Lucius Natta, a young man of the highest rank, as to whom we see already of what sort of disposition he is, and what sort of man he is likely to turn out wished to be popular among the centuries of the knights, both because of his natural connection with them, and because of his intentions as to the future, that will not be a crime in, or matter of accusation against his stepfather; nor, if a vestal virgin, my client's near relation, gave up her place to see the spectacle in his favour, was that any other than a pious action nor is he liable to any charge on that ground. All these are the kind offices of intimate friends the services done to the poorer classes, the regular privileges of candidates.

But I must change my tone for Cato argues with me on rigid and stoic principles. He says that it is not true that good-will is conciliated by food. He says that men's

Do not, then, O Cato, blame with too great severity of language the principles of our ancestors, which facts, and the length of time that our power has flourished under them, justify. There was, in the time of our ancestors, a learned man of the same sect an honourable citizen, and one of high rank, Quintus Tubero. He, when Quintus Maximus was giving a feast to the Roman people, in the name of his uncle Africanus, was asked by Maximus to prepare a couch for the banquet as Tubero was a son of the sister of the same Africanus. And he, a most learned man and a Stoic, covered for that occasion some couches made in the Carthaginian fashion, with skins of kids, and exhibited some Samian [*] vessels, as if Diogenes the Cynic had been dead, and not as if he were paying respect to the obsequies of that godlike Africanus; a man with respect to whom Maximus, when he was pronouncing his funeral panegyric on the day of his death, expressed his gratitude to the immortal gods for having caused that man to be born in this republic above all others, for that it was quite inevitable that the sovereignty of the world must belong to that state of which be was a citizen. At the celebration of the obsequies of such a man the Roman people was very indignant at the perverse wisdom of Tubero,