[229] That you may not be deceived in me--_Ut neque vos capiamini._ "This verb is undoubtedly used in this passage for _decipere_. Compare Tibull. Eleg. iii. 6, 45: _Nec vos aut capiant pendentia brachia collo, Aut fallat blandâ sordida tingua prece._ Cic. Acad. iv. 20: _Sapientis vim maximam esse cavere, ne capiatur._" Gerlach. [230] To secure their election--_Per ambitionem. Ambire_ is to canvass for votes; to court the favor of the people. [231] Of yonder crowd of nobles--_ex illo globo nobilitatis. Illo,_ [Greek: _deiktikos_]. [232] I know some--who after they have been elected, etc.--"At whom Marina directs this observation, it is impossible to tell. Gerlach referring to Cic. Quest. Acad. ii. 1, 2, thinks that Lucullus is meant. But if he supposes that Lucullus was present _to the mind of Marius_ when he spoke, he is egregiously deceived, for Marius was forty years antecedent to Lucullus. It is possible, however, that _Sallust_, thinking of Lucullus when he wrote Marius's speech, may have fallen into an anachronism, and have attributed to Marius, whose character he had assumed, an observation which might justly have been made in his own day." _Kritzius_. [233] Persons who invert the order of things--_Homines Praeposteri._ Men who do that last which should be done first. [234] For though to discharge the duties of the office, etc.--_Nam gerere, quam fieri, tempore posterius, re atque usu prius est._ With _gerere_ is to be understood _consulatum_; with _fieri, consulem._ This is imitated from Demosthenes, Olynth. iii.: [Greek: _To gar prattein ton legein kai cheirotonein, usteron on tae taxei, proteron tae dynamei kai kreitton esti_.] "Acting is posterior in order to speaking and voting, but prior and superior in effect." [235] With those haughty nobles--_Cum illorum superbui. Virtus Scipiades et mitis sapientia Laeli._ [236] My condition _Mihi fortuna_. "That is, my lot, or condition, in which I was born, in which I had no hand in producing." _Dietsch_. [237] The circumstance of birth, etc. _Naturam unam et communem omnium existumo_. "Nascendi sortem" is the explanation which Dietsch gives to _naturam_. One man is _born_ as well as another, but the difference between men is made by their different modes of action; a difference which the nobles falsely suppose to proceed from fortune. "Voltaire, Mohammed, Act.I., sce. iv., has expressed the sentiment of Sallust exactly: Les mortels sont égaux, ce n'est point la naissance, C'est la seule vertu qui fait leur différence." _Burnouf._