[38]
Do these things appear to you trifling
supports and aids towards obtaining the consulship? Is the good-will of the soldiery a trifle?
who are both intrinsically powerful through their own numbers, and also by their influence
among their connections, and who in declaring a consul have great weight among the entire
Roman people. Are the votes of the army a trifle? No; for it is generals, and not interpreters
of words, who are elected at the consular comitia. Most
influential, then, is such a speech as this—“He refreshed me when I was
wounded. He gave me a share of the plunder. He was the general when we took that
camp—when we fought that battle. He never imposed harder work on the soldier than he
underwent himself. He was as fortunate as he is brave.” What weight do you not
suppose this must have to gaining a reputation and good-will among men? Indeed, if there is a
sort of superstition in the comitia, that up to this time the
omen to be drawn from the vote of the prerogative 1 tribe has always proved true,
what wonder is there that in such a meeting the reputation of good fortune and such discourse
as this has had the greatest weight?
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
1 In the comitia centuriata the people voted in their centuries; the order in which the centuries voted was decided by lot, and that which gave it a vote first was called the centuria praerogativa. The question of a tribus praerogativa is a more disputed point; but on this see Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 997, v. Tribus, (Roman.)
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.