[58]
17. Still we should avoid any suspicion of
penuriousness. Mamercus was a very wealthy man,
and his refusal of the aedileship was the cause of his
defeat for the consulship. If, therefore, such entertainment is demanded by the people, men of right1
judgment must at least consent to furnish it, even if
they do not like the idea. But in so doing they
should keep within their means, as I myself did.
They should likewise afford such entertainment, if
gifts of money to the people are to be the means of
securing on some occasion some more important or
more useful object. Thus Orestes recently won
great honour by his public dinners given in the
streets, on the pretext of their being a tithe-offering.
Neither did anybody find fault with Marcus Seius
for supplying grain to the people at an as2 the peck
at a time when the market-price was prohibitive;
for he thus succeeded in disarming the bitter and
deep-seated prejudice of the people against him at
an outlay neither very great nor discreditable to him
in view of the fact that he was aedile at the time. But
the highest honour recently fell to my friend Milo,
who bought a band of gladiators for the sake of the
country, whose preservation then depended upon
my recall from exile, and with them put down the
desperate schemes, the reign of terror, of Publius
Clodius.
The justification for gifts of money, therefore, is
either necessity or expediency.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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