affront such a man, first
in arms as in place, and the author of so many benefits to the State. It
was the custom at Rome for those who were candidates for any office to
address and ingratiate themselves with the people, going about the Forum
in a toga without any tunic underneath it, either in order to show their
humility by such a dress, or else in order to display the wounds which
they had received, in token of their valour. At that early period there
could be no suspicion of bribery, and it was not for that reason that
the citizens wished their candidates to come down among them ungirt and
without a tunic. It was not till long afterwards that votes were bought
and sold, and that a candidature became an affair of money. This habit
of receiving bribes, when once introduced, spread to the courts of
justice and to the armies of the commonwealth, and finally brought the
city under the despotic rule of the emperors, as the power of arms was
not equal to that of money. For it was well said that he who first
introduced the habit of feasting and bribing voters ruined the
constitution. This plague crept secretly and silently into Rome, and was
for a long time undiscovered. We cannot tell who was the first to bribe
the people or the courts of law at Rome. At Athens it is said that the
first man who gave money to the judges for his acquittal was Anytus the
son of Anthemion, when he was tried for treachery at Pylos towards the
end of the Peloponnesian War, a period when men of uncorrupted
simplicity and virtue were still to be found in the Forum at Rome.

XV. Marcius displayed many scars, gained in the numerous battles in
which for seventeen years in succession he had always taken a prominent
part. The people were abashed at these evidences of his valour, and
agreed among themselves that they would return him as consul. But when,
on the day of election, he appeared in the Forum, escorted by a splendid
procession of the entire Senate, and all the patricians were seen
collected round him evidently intent upon obtaining his election, many
of the people lost their feeling of goodwill towards him, and regarded
him with indignation and envy; which passions were assisted by their
fear lest, if a man of such aristocratic tendencies and such influence
with the patricians should obtain power, he might altogether destroy the
liberties of the people. For these reasons they did not elect Marcius.
When two persons had been elected consuls, th