On Duties 2.58 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), On Duties 2.58

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 right 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 as 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.