[225] _M._ Orelli, Ed.; _Marco_ MSS. [226] _his_ H, Edd.; _hijs_ c; _iis_ B b; _is_ L. *58* XVII. 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. #Justification of such extravagance.# 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_[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. *59* #The golden mean is best.# And in making them even in such cases, the rule of the golden mean is best. To be sure, Lucius Philippus, the son of Quintus, a man of great ability and unusual renown, used to make it his boast that without giving any entertainments he had risen to all the positions looked upon as the highest within the gift of the state. Cotta could say the same, and Curio. I, too, may make this boast my own--to a certain extent[AT]; for in comparison with the eminence of the offices to which I was unanimously elected at the earliest legal age--and this was not the good fortune of any one of those just mentioned--the outlay in my aedileship was very inconsiderable. #Lavish expenditure on public works.#