[77]
Nay more, why is it that you have a nomenclator 1 with you? for in so doing, you are practicing a
trick and a deceit. For if it be an honourable thing for your fellow-citizens to be addressed
by name by you, it is a shameful thing for them to be better known to your servant than to
yourself. If though you know them yourself it seems better to use a prompter, why do you
sometimes address them before he has whispered their names in your ear? Why, again, when he
has reminded you of them, do you salute them as if you knew them yourself? And why, after you
are once elected, are you more careless about saluting them at all? If you regulate all these
things by the usages of the city, it is all right; but if you choose to weigh them by the
precepts of your sect they will be found to be entirely wrong. Those enjoyments, then, of
games, and gladiators, and banquets, all which things our ancestors desired, are not to be
taken away from the Roman people, nor ought candidates to be forbidden the exercise of that
kindness which is liberality rather than bribery.
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1 The nomenclator was a slave who accompanied the candidate in going his rounds, and told him the name of every one he met, so that he might be able to accost them as if they were personally known to himself.
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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