Pro L. Murena

And since we are not to address this speech either to an ignorant multitude, or to any assembly of rustics, I will speak a little boldly about the pursuits of educated men, which are both well known and agreeable to you, O judges, and to me. Learn then, O judges, that all these good qualities, divine and splendid as they are, which we behold in Marcus Cato, are his own peculiar attributes. The qualities which we sometimes wish for in him, are not all those which are implanted in a man by nature, but some of them are such as are derived from education. For there was once a man of the greatest genius, whose name was Zeno, the imitators of whose example are called Stoics. His opinions and precepts are of this sort: that a wise man is never influenced by interest; never pardons any man's fault; that no one is merciful except a fool and a trifler; that it is not the part of a man to be moved or pacified by entreaties; that wise men, let them be ever so deformed, are

All these opinions that most acute man, Marcus Cato, having been induced by learned advocates of them has embraced; and that, not for the sake of arguing about them as is the case with most men, but of living by them. Do the Publicans ask for anything? “Take care that their influence has no weight.” Do any suppliants, miserable and unhappy men, come to us? “You will be a wicked and infamous man if you do anything from being influenced by mercy.” Does any one confess that he has done wrong, and beg pardon for his wrong doing? “To pardon is a crime of the deepest dye.”—“But it is a trifling offence.” “All offences are equal.” You say something. “That is a fixed and unalterable principle.” “You are influenced not by the facts, but by your opinion.” “A wise man never forms mere opinions.” “You have made a mistake in some point.” He thinks that you are abusing him.—And in accordance with these principles of his are the following assertions: “I said in the senate, that I would prosecute one of the candidates for the consulship.” “You said that when you were angry.” “A wise man never is angry.” “But you said it for some temporary purpose.” “It is the act,” says he, “of a worthless man to deceive by a lie; it is a disgraceful act to alter one's opinion; to be moved by entreaties is wickedness; to pity any one is an enormity.”

But our philosophers, (for I confess, O Cato, that I too, in my youth, distrusting my own abilities, sought assistance from learning,) our philosophers, I say, men of the school of Plato and Aristotle, men of soberness and moderation, say that private interest does sometimes have weight even with a wise man. They say that it does become a virtuous man to feel pity; that there are different gradations of offences, and different degrees of punishment appropriate to each; that a man with every proper regard for firmness may pardon offences; that even the wise man himself has sometimes nothing more than opinion to go upon, without absolute certainty, that he is sometimes angry, that he is sometimes influenced and pacified by entreaty that he sometimes does change an opinion which he may have expressed when it is better to do so, that he sometimes abandons his previous opinions altogether, and that all his virtues are tempered by a certain moderation

If any chance, O Cato, had conducted endowed with your existing natural disposition to those tutors, you would not indeed have been a better man than you are, not a braver one, nor more temperate, nor more just than you are, (for that is not possible,) but you would have been a little more inclined to lenity; you would not when you were not induced by any enmity, or provoked by any personal injury, accuse a most virtuous man, a man of the highest rank and the greatest integrity; you would consider that as fortune had entrusted the guardianship of the same year to you [*](Cato was tribune elect.) and to Murena, that you were connected with him by some certain political union; and the severe things which you have said in the senate you would either not have said, or you would have guarded against their being applied to him, or you would have interpreted them in the mildest sense.

And even you yourself, (at least that is my opinion and expectation,) excited as you are at present by the impetuosity of your disposition and elated as you are both by the vigour of our natural character and by your confidence in your own ability, and inflamed as you are by your recent study of all these precepts, will find practice modify them and time and increasing years soften and humanise you. In truth, those tutors and teachers of virtue, whom you think so much of appear to me themselves to have carried their definitions of duties somewhat further than is agreeable to nature, and it would be better if, when we had in theory pushed our principles to extremities, yet in practice we stopped at what was expedient. “Forgive nothing.” Say rather, forgive some things, but not everything. “Do nothing for the sake of private influence.” Certainly resist private influence when virtue and good faith require you to do so. “Do not be moved by pity.” Certainly if it is to extinguish all impartiality; nevertheless, there is some credit due to humanity. “Abide by your own opinion.”

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. “Many men went to meet him as he was departing from his province, when he was a candidate for the consulship.” That is a very usual thing to do. Who is there whom people do not go out to meet on his return home? “What a number of people they were.” In the first place, if I am not able to give you any exact account of it what wonder is it if many men did go out to meet such a man on his arrival, being a candidate for the consulship? If they had not done so, it would have appeared much more strange.

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? “What need is there,” says he, “of an escort?” Are you asking me what is the need of that which we have always availed ourselves of? Men of the lower orders have only one opportunity of deserving kindness at the hands of our order, or of requiting services,—namely, this one attention of escorting us when we are candidates for offices. For it is neither possible, nor ought we or the Roman knights to require them to escort the candidates to whom they are attached for whole days together; but if our house is frequented by them, if we are sometimes escorted to the forum, if we are honoured by their attendance for the distance of one piazza, we then appear to be treated with all due observance and respect; and those are the attentions of our poorer friends who are not hindered by business, of whom numbers are not wont to desert virtuous and beneficent men.

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

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,

and therefore he, a most upright man, a most virtuous citizen, though he was the grandson of Lucius Paullus, the sister's son, as I have said before, of Publius Africanus, lost the praetorship by his kid skins. The Roman people disapproves of private luxury, but admires public magnificence. It does not love profuse banquets, still less does it love sordid and uncivilized behaviour. It makes a proper distinction between different duties and different seasons; and allows of vicissitudes of labour and pleasure. For as to what you say, that it is not right for men's minds to be influenced, in appointing magistrates, by any other consideration than that of the worth of the candidates, this principle even you yourself—you, a man of the greatest worth—do not in every case adhere to. For why do you ark any one to take pains for you, to assist you? You ask me to make you governor over myself to entrust myself to you. What is the meaning of this? Ought I to be asked this by you, or should not you rather be asked by me to undertake labour and danger for the sake of my safety?

Nay more, why is it that you have a nomenclator [*](The nomenclator was a slave who accompanied the candidate in going his rounds, and told him the name of every one he met, so that he might be able to accost them as if they were personally known to himself.) with you? for in so doing, you are practicing a trick and a deceit. For if it be an honourable thing for your fellow-citizens to be addressed by name by you, it is a shameful thing for them to be better known to your servant than to yourself. If though you know them yourself it seems better to use a prompter, why do you sometimes address them before he has whispered their names in your ear? Why, again, when he has reminded you of them, do you salute them as if you knew them yourself? And why, after you are once elected, are you more careless about saluting them at all? If you regulate all these things by the usages of the city, it is all right; but if you choose to weigh them by the precepts of your sect they will be found to be entirely wrong. Those enjoyments, then, of games, and gladiators, and banquets, all which things our ancestors desired, are not to be taken away from the Roman people, nor ought candidates to be forbidden the exercise of that kindness which is liberality rather than bribery.

Oh, but it is the interest of the republic that has induced you to become a prosecutor. I do believe, O Cato, that you have come forward under the influence of those feelings and of that opinion. But you err out of ignorance. That which I am doing, O judges, I am doing out of regard to my friendship for Lucius Murena and to his own worth, and I also do assert and call you all to witness that I am doing it for the sake of peace, of tranquillity, of concord, of liberty, of safety,—yes, even for the sake of the lives of us all. Listen, O judges, listen to the consul,—I will not speak with undue arrogance, I will only say, who devotes all his thoughts day and night to the republic. Lucius Catiline did not despise and scorn the republic to such a degree as to think that with the forces which he took away with him he could subdue this city. The contagion of that wickedness spreads more widely than any one believes: more men are implicated in it than people are aware of. It is within the city,—the Trojan horse, I say, is within the city; but you shall never be surprised sleeping by that while I am consul.

You ask of me why I am afraid of Catiline? I am not; and I have taken care that no one should have any reason to be afraid of him; but I do say that those soldiers of his, whom I see present here, are objects of fear: nor is the army which Lucius Catiline now has with him as formidable as those men are who are said to have deserted that army; for they have not deserted it but they have been left by him as spies, as men placed in ambuscade, to threaten our lives and liberties. Those men are very anxious that an upright consul and an able general—a man connected both by nature and by fortune with the safety of the republic, should by your decision be removed from the office of protecting the city, from the guardianship of the state. Their swords and their audacity I have procured the rejection of in the campus, I have disarmed them in the forum, I have often checked them at my own house; but if you now give them up one of the consuls, they will have gained much more by your votes than by their own swords. That which I, in spite of the resistance of many, have managed and carried through, namely, that on the first of January there should be two consuls in the republic, is of great consequence, O judges.

Do not think that they should exploit ordinary counsels or the ordinary modes of proceeding --- It is not some unjust law, some mischievous bribery, or some improprieties in the republic that have just been heard of; that are the real objects for your inquiry now. Plans have been formed in this state, O judges, for destroying the city, for massacring the citizens, for extinguishing the Roman name. They are citizens,—citizens, I say, (if indeed it is lawful to call them by this name,) who are forming and have formed these plans respecting their own country. Every day I am counteracting their designs, disarming their audacity, resisting their wickedness. But I warn you, O judges; my consulship is now just at an end. Do not refuse me a successor in my diligence; do not refuse me him, to whom I am anxious to deliver over the republic in a sound condition, that he may defend it from these great dangers.