1That a chief of engineers once gave a place to his fellow tribesmen — what will they decide against leading men who have acquired whole booths in the circus for the sake of their fellow tribesmen? 1All these charges about followers, shows and lunches alike were cast by the crowd upon your excessive diligence, Servius, and yet on these points Murena is defended by the authority of the senate. 1What then? 1does the senate think it a crime to go out to meet a candidate? 1No, but to do it for pay. 1Prove it. 1Does it think it a crime that many follow him? 1No, but hired men. 1Show it.
1Does it think it a crime to give a place at a show or to invite to lunch? 1Not at all, but doing it generally, indiscriminately. 1What does 'generally' mean? 1To everyone. 1Therefore if Natta, a young man of the highest rank, whose present spirit and future character as a man we can see, wished to be influential in the centuries of knights, both for this duty of kinship and for the time to come, that will not be a cause of harm or a charge against his stepfather; nor, if a Vestal Virgin, his relative and close connection, gave up her place at the gladiatorial games to him, did she act otherwise than dutifully, or is he anything but free from blame.
1All these are the services of close friends, the advantages of the poor, the duties of candidates. 74But Cato deals with me sternly and in Stoic fashion; he denies that it is right for goodwill to be enticed by food, he denies that men's judgement in entrusting magistracies ought to be corrupted by pleasures. 74So if anyone invites someone to dinner for the sake of his candidacy, is he to be condemned? 74'Indeed,' he says, 'would you seek supreme power, supreme authority, the helm of the state, by pampering men's senses, soothing their minds and plying them with pleasures? 74Were you seeking,' he says, 'a pander's trade from a flock of pampered youths, or the empire of the world from the Roman people?' 74A dreadful speech; 74but practice, life, custom, the state itself rejects it.
74And yet neither the Spartans, the originators of that way of life and speech, who recline at their daily meals on hard oak, nor indeed the Cretans, none of whom has ever eaten lying down, preserved their states better than the Romans, who divide their time between pleasure and toil; 74of whom the latter were destroyed by a single arrival of our army, while the former preserve their discipline and laws through the protection of our empire.