1Prove it was for pay; 1I shall grant that it is a crime. 70If this is set aside, what do you find fault with? 70'What need is there,' he says, 'of followers?' 70Do you ask me that, what need there is of something we have always made use of? 70Men of slender means have only one opportunity either of earning a kindness from our order or of repaying one: this service and attendance on us in our candidacies. 70For it is neither possible nor to be demanded of us or of the Roman knights that they should attend their friends who are candidates for whole days on end; 70if our house is thronged by them, if we are sometimes escorted by them to the forum, if we are honoured by their company for one length of the basilica, we seem to be diligently attended and courted; 70that constant attendance belongs to poorer friends who are not busy, of whom good and generous men usually have no lack.
71Do not, then, snatch from the humbler class of men this reward for their service, Cato; 71allow those who hope for everything from us to have something themselves which they can give to us. 71If they have nothing but their own vote, the poor, even when they vote, have no influence. 71Finally, they themselves, as they are accustomed to say, cannot plead for us, cannot stand surety for us, cannot invite us to their homes. 71And they ask all these things of us, and think that what they obtain from us can be repaid by nothing else but their service. 71And so they resisted both the Fabian law, which concerns the number of followers, and the decree of the senate which was passed in the consulship of Caesar.
71For there is no penalty which could shut out the attentiveness of the poorer from this old custom of service. 72But shows were given by tribes and people were invited to lunch generally. 72Although this was not done by Murena at all, judges, but was done by his friends according to custom and within measure, still, reminded by the matter itself, I recall how many votes these complaints made in the senate cost us, Servius. 72For what time has there been, within our memory or our fathers', when this practice — whether it is bribery or generosity — did not exist, that a place both in the circus and in the forum should be given to friends and fellow tribesmen?
72These rewards and advantages men of humbler standing used to obtain from their own fellow tribesmen by long-established custom