And first of all I will answer Marcus Cato a man who directs his life by a certain rule and system and who most carefully weighs the motives of every duty about my own duty. Cato says it is not right that I who have been consul and the very passer 1 of the law of bribery and corruption and who behaved so rigorously in my own consulship should take up the cause of Lucius Murena and his reproach has great weight with me and makes me desirous to make not only you, O judges, whom I am especially bound to satisfy, but also Cato himself, a most worthy and upright man, approve the reasons of my action. By whom then, O Marcus Cato, is it more just that a consul should be defended than by a consul? Who can there be, who ought there to be, dearer to me in the republic, than he to whom the republic which has been supported by my great labours and dangers is delivered by me alone to be supported for the future? For if, in the demanding back things which may be alienated, he ought to incur the hazard of the trial who has bound himself by a legal obligation, surely still more rightly in the trial of a consul elect, that consul who has declared him consul ought most especially to be the first mover of the kindness of the Roman people, and his defender from danger.
