[69]
What then? Suppose I were even to add, what there would be nothing
unusual in, that many had been asked to go? Would that be matter of accusation, or at all
strange, that in a city in which we, when we are asked, often come to escort the sons of even
the lowest rank, almost before the night is over, from the furthest part of the city, men
should not mind going at the third hour into the Campus Martius, especially when they have
been invited in the name of such a man as Murena? What then? What if all the societies had
come to meet him, of which bodies many are sitting here as judges? What if many men of our own
most honourable order had come? What then? What if the whole of that most officious body of
candidates, which will not suffer any man to enter the city except in an honourable manner,
had come, or even our prosecutor himself—if Postumius had come to meet him with a
numerous crowd of his dependents? What is there strange in such a multitude? I say nothing of
his clients, his neighbours, his tribesmen, or the whole army of Lucullus, which, just at that
time, had come to Rome to his triumph; I say this, that that crowd, paying that
gratuitous mark or respect was never backward in paying respect not only to the merit of any
one, but even to his wishes.
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