[43]
And since I have proved, O judges, that in this con-test for the consulship Murena had the
same claims of worth that Sulpicius had, accompanied with a very different fortune as respects
the business of their respective provinces, I will say more plainly in what particular my
friend Servius was inferior; and I will say those things while you are now hearing
me,—now that the time of the elections is over—which I have often said to
him by himself before the affair was settled. I often told you, O Servius, that you did not
know how to stand for the consulship; and, in respect to those very matters which I saw you
conducting and advocating in a brave and magnanimous spirit, I often said to you that you
appeared to me to be a brave senator rather than a wise candidate. For, in the first place,
the terrors and threats of accusations which you were in the habit of employing every day, are
rather the part of a fearless man; but they have an unfavourable effect on the opinion of the
people as regards a man's hopes of getting anything from them, and they even disarm the zeal
of his friends. Somehow or other, this is always the case; and it has been noticed, not in one
or two instances only, but in many; so that the moment a candidate is seen to turn his
attention to provocations, he is supposed to have given up all hopes of his election.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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