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 pretors, 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 has stood for the consulship the first moment that by law I could,—who has been elected consul the first time that I have stood; so that this honor 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. 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 honor; that you have conferred it on my first application, in my proper year. But yet nothing can be more splendid or more honorable for me than this circumstance,—that at the comitia at which I was elected you delivered not your ballot, the vindication of your silent liberty, but your eager voices as the witnesses of your good will toward and zeal for me. And so it was not the last tribe
72
