2.
For, in truth, if you please to recollect, you will find that those new men who have at any
time been made consuls without a repulse, have been elected after long toil, and on some
critical emergency, having stood for it many years after they had been praetors, and a good
deal later than they might have done according to the laws regulating the age of candidates
for the office; but that those who stood for it in their regular year were not elected
without a repulse; that I am the only one of all the new men whom we can remember who have
stood for the consulship the first moment that by law I could,—who have been
elected consul the first time that I have stood; so that this honour which you have conferred
on me, having been sought by me at the proper time, appears not to have been filched by me on
the occasion of some unpopular candidate offering himself,—not to have been gained
by long perseverance in asking for it, but to have been fairly earned by my worth and
dignity.
[4]
This, also, is a most honorable thing for me, O
Romans, which I mentioned a few minutes ago,—that I am the first new man for many
years on whom you have conferred this honour,—that you have conferred it on my
first application, in my proper year. But yet nothing can be more splendid or more honourable
for me than this circumstance,—that at the comitia at which I was elected you
delivered not your ballot, 1 the vindication of your silent liberty, but your eager voices as
the witnesses of your good-will towards, and zeal for me. And so it was not the last tribe of
the votes, but the very first moment of your meeting,—it was not the single voices
of the criers, but the whole Roman people with one voice that declared me consul.
[5]
I think this eminent and unprecedented kindness of yours, O Romans, of great weight as a
reward for my courage, and as a source of joy to me, but still more calculated to impress me
with care and anxiety. For, O Romans, many and grave thoughts occupy my mind, which allow me
but little rest day or night. First, there is anxiety about discharging the duties of the
consulship which is a difficult and important business to all men, and especially to me above
all other men; for if I err, I shall obtain no pardon—if I do well, I shall get but
little praise, and that, too, extorted from unwilling people—if I am in doubt, I
have no faithful counselors to whom I can apply—if I am in difficulty, I have no
sure assistance from the nobles on which I can depend.
1 Middleton says (with express reference to this passage,) “the method of choosing consuls was not by an open vote, but by a kind of ballot or little tickets of wood distributed to the citizens with the names of the candidates severally inscribed on each; but in Cicero's case, the people were not content with this secret and silent way of testifying their inclinations but before they came to any scrutiny, loudly and universally proclaimed Cicero the first consul; so that, as he himself declared in his speech to them after his election he was not chosen by the votes of particular citizens, but by the common suffrage of the city; nor declared by the voice of the crier, but of the whole Roman people.”
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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