who was not only not their own, but angry with them.  And after that, as if it was not sufficient for them that some of the citizens should be starved, and others be exposed to the plague, they must needs plunge wantonly into war, in order that the city might suffer every conceivable misery at once, because it had refused any longer to remain in slavery to the rich.  Excited by these speeches, the people would not enrol themselves as soldiers for the war, and looked with suspicion on the proposal for the new colony.  The Senate was greatly perplexed, but Marcius, now a person of great importance and very highly thought of in the State, began to place himself in direct opposition to the popular leaders, and to support the patrician cause.  In spite of the efforts of the demagogues, a colony was sent out to Velitrae, those whose names were drawn by lot being compelled by heavy penalties to go thither; but as the people utterly refused to serve in the campaign against the Volscians, Marcius made up a troop of his own clients, with which and what others he could persuade to join him he made an inroad into the territory of Antium.  Here he found much corn, and captured many prisoners and much cattle.  He kept none of it for himself, but returned to Rome with his troops loaded with plunder.  This caused the others to repent of their determination, when they saw the wealth which these men had obtained, but it embittered their hatred of Marcius, whom they regarded as gaining glory for himself at the expense of the people.

XIV.  Shortly after this, however, Marcius stood for the consulship, and then the people relented and felt ashamed to 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.