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 
 [A considerable break in the text.] that the prefect of the carpenters Besides the
 classes into which the centuries were divided and the four supernumerary centuries of accensi , velati , proletarii , and capite censi , there
 were three centuries classed according to their occupation. The fabri , or carpenters, who were attached to the centuries of the first class; the
 cornicines , or hornblowers, and liticines , or trumpeters, who were reckoned with the fourth class. 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 
 judgments, in the important business of electing to magistracies, ought not to be corrupted by
 pleasures. Therefore, if any one, to promote his canvass, invites another to supper, he must be
 condemned. “Shall you,” says he, “seek to obtain supreme power, supreme authority, and the helm
 of the republic, by encouraging men's sensual appetites, by soothing their minds, by tendering
 luxuries to them? Are you asking employment as a pimp from a band of luxurious youths, or the
 sovereignty of the world from the Roman people?” An extraordinary sort of speech! but our
 usages, our way of living, our manners, and the constitution itself rejects it. For the
 Lacedaemonians, the original authors of that way of living and of that sort of language, men who
 lie at their daily meals on hard oak benches, and the Cretans, of whom no one ever lies down to
 eat at all, have neither of them preserved their political constitutions or their power better
 than the Romans, who set apart times for pleasure as well as times for labour; for one of those
 nations was destroyed by a single invasion of our army, the other only preserves its discipline
 and its laws by means of the protection afforded to it by our supremacy. 
 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 Samian vessels were made of an
 inferior earthenware; Carthaginian couches were very low and narrow. 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,