1Therefore, Cato, do not censure with too severe a speech the institutions of our ancestors, which experience itself and the long duration of our empire approve. 1There was in our fathers' time a learned man of this same school, an honourable and noble man, Tubero. 1When Maximus was giving a public banquet to the Roman people in the name of Africanus, his uncle, Tubero was asked by Maximus to spread the dining couches, since Tubero was the son of the same Africanus's sister. 1And he, a most learned man and a Stoic, spread Punic couches with goatskins and set out Samian pottery, as if it were Diogenes the Cynic who had died, and not the death of the godlike Africanus that was being honoured; 1of whom Maximus, when he delivered his eulogy on his funeral day, gave thanks to the immortal gods that that man had been born in this state above all others; 1for the empire of the world must needs be where he was.
1At the celebration of his funeral the Roman people resented this perverse wisdom of Tubero's, and so a most upright man and an excellent citizen, though he was the grandson of Paullus and, as I said, the son of Africanus's sister, was cast down from the praetorship by those goatskins. 76The Roman people hates private luxury but loves public magnificence; 76it does not like lavish banquets, still less meanness and boorishness; 76it distinguishes the claims of duties and occasions, the alternation of toil and pleasure. 76For as to your saying that men's minds ought to be drawn to entrusting a magistracy by nothing except merit, you yourself, in whom merit is supreme, do not observe this.
76For why do you ask anyone to support you, to help you? 76You ask me to make you my superior, to entrust myself to you. 76What, pray? 76ought I to be asked this by you, or rather you by me, to undertake toil and danger for my safety? 77What of the fact that you have a nomenclator? 77in this indeed you cheat and deceive. 77For if it is honourable for your fellow citizens to be called by name by you, it is shameful that they should be better known to your slave than to you. 77But if you already know them, must they still be addressed through a prompter when you canvass, as if you were unsure?
77What of the fact that, when you have been prompted, you nonetheless greet them as if you knew them yourself? 77What of the fact that after you have been elected you greet them much more carelessly? 77All these things, if you measure them by the usage of the state, are right; 77but if you choose to weigh them by the precepts of your school, they would be found utterly wrong. 77Therefore neither should the Roman plebs be robbed of those enjoyments of games, gladiators and banquets, all of which our ancestors established, nor should candidates be deprived of that kindness which signifies generosity rather than bribery.