1You demanded a law on bribery, which you did not lack; 1for there was the Calpurnian law, drafted with the utmost severity. 1Your wishes and your standing were humoured. 1But that whole law would perhaps have armed your prosecution, if you had had a guilty defendant; 1but it worked against your candidacy. 47A heavier penalty against the common people was demanded by your voice; 47the feelings of the poorer were stirred. 47Exile for our order; 47the senate gave in to your demand, but not gladly did it establish, at your instance, a harsher condition for our common lot. 47A penalty was attached to the excuse of illness; 47this offended the feelings of many, who must either labour against the interests of their health or, through the discomfort of illness, give up the other enjoyments of life as well.
47What then? 47who carried these measures? 47He who obeyed the authority of the senate and your wishes; in short, he carried them who stood least to gain from them. 47As for those proposals which a full senate rejected, very much in accordance with my wishes, do you think they did you only moderate harm? 47You demanded the mixing of the votes, the prerogative ordering of the Manilian law, the levelling of influence, rank and votes. 47Honourable men, influential in their own neighbourhoods and towns, took it hard that a man such as you had fought to have all grades of rank and influence abolished. 47You also wanted jurors to be nominated by the prosecutor, so that the hidden hatreds of citizens, which are now held in check in silent discord, might burst out against the fortunes of all the best men.
48All these things were paving the way for your prosecution but blocking the way to your success. 48And of them all, the greatest blow, struck at your candidacy not without my protest, was the one about which much has been said most weightily by that most talented and eloquent man, Quintus Hortensius. 48For this reason, too, a harder position for speaking has been given me, in that, since both he and Crassus, a man of the highest standing, diligence and eloquence, had spoken before me, I, speaking last, was not to handle some part of the case but to say what I thought about the whole matter. 48And so I am dealing with much the same points and, as far as I can, judges, I am trying to forestall your weariness.