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,
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.