ing, they are so humble and cringing, you
would think you were at a comedy, and seeing Micon or Laches; when they
are constrained to repay what they have borrowed, they become so turgid
and bombastic that you would take them for those descendants of
Hercules, Cresphontes and Temenus. This is enough to say of the
senatorial order.

28. And let us come to the idle and lazy common people, among whom some,
who have not even got shoes boast of high-sounding names; calling
themselves Cimessores, Statarii, Semicupae, Serapina, or Cicimbricus, or
Gluturiorus, Trulla, Lucanicus, Pordaca, or Salsula,[174] with numbers
of other similar appellations. These men spend their whole lives in
drinking, and gambling, and brothels, and pleasures, and public
spectacles; and to them the Circus Maximus is their temple, their home,
their public assembly; in fact, their whole hope and desire.[175]

29. And you may see in the forum, and roads, and streets, and places of
meeting, knots of people collected, quarrelling violently with one
another, and objecting to one another, and splitting themselves into
violent parties.

30. Among whom those who have lived long, having influence by reason of
their age, their gray hairs and wrinkles, are continually crying out
that the republic cannot stand, if in the contest which is about to take
place, the skilful charioteer, whom some individual backs, is not
foremost in the race, and does not dextrously shave the turning-post
with the trace-horses.

31. And when there is so much ruinous carelessness, when the wished-for
day of the equestrian games dawns, before the sun has visibly risen,
they all rush out with headlong haste, as if with their speed they would
outstrip the very chariots which are going to race; while as to the
event of the contest they are all torn asunder by opposite wishes, and
the greater part of them, through their anxiety, pass sleepless nights.

32. From hence, if you go to some cheap theatre, the actors on the stage
are driven off by hisses, if they have not taken the precaution to
conciliate the lowest of the people by gifts of money. And if there
should be no noise, then, in imitation of the people in the Tauric
Chersonese, they raise an outcry that the strangers ought to be expelled
(on whose assistance they have always relied for their principal
support), using foul and ridiculous expressions; such as are greatly at
variance with the pursuits and inclinations of that populace