Livy

“ Ye can therefore insure to yourselves perpetual peace, as far as regards the Latins, either by adopting severe or lenient measures. Do ye choose to adopt cruel conduct towards people who have surrendered and have been conquered? Ye may destroy all Latium, make a vast desert of a place whence, in many and serious wars, ye have often made use of an excellent army of allies. Do you wish, according to the example of your ancestors, to augment the Roman state by admitting the vanquished among your citizens? Materials for extending your power by the highest glory are at hand. ”

“ Am I to expect the fate of Cassius and Mælius? You acted kindly in appearing shocked at it: the gods will avert it: but never will they come down from heaven on my account: they must inspire you with a determination to avert it; as they inspired me, in arms and in peace, to defend you from barbarous foes and tyrannical fellow-citizens. Is the spirit of so great a people so mean, that aid against your adversaries always satisfies you? And are you not to know any contest against the patricians, except how you may suffer them to domineer over you? ”

“ In a word, whether is the supreme power belonging to the Roman people, or is it yours? Whether by the expulsion of kings has dominion been acquired for you or equal liberty for all? It is fitting that the Roman people should be allowed to enact a law, if it please. Or will ye decree a levy by way of punishment, according as each bill shall be proposed? and as soon as I, as tribune, shall begin to call the tribes to give their votes, will you, forthwith, as consul, force the younger men to take the military oath, and lead them out to camp? and will you threaten the commons? ”

“ The nation, which now approaches in disorderly march, is one to which nature has given great spirits and bodies rather huge than firm. Let the disaster of Rome serve as a proof. They captured the city when lying open to them; a small handful of men from the citadel and Capitol withstand them. Already tired out by the slow process of a siege, they retire and spread themselves through the country. Gorged with food and wine hastily swallowed, when night comes on they stretch themselves indiscriminately, like brutes, near streams of water, without entrenchment, without guards or advanced posts ”

“ Where there is an equal share of strength, is there also an equal share in the government? This indeed in itself reflects no extraordinary degree of honour on us, as still acknowledging Rome to be the metropolis of Latium; but that it may possibly appear to do so, has been effected by our long-continued forbearance. But if ye ever wished for an opportunity of sharing in the government, and enjoying freedom, lo! this opportunity is now at hand, presented both by your own valour and the bounty of the gods. Ye have tried their patience by refusing them soldiers. ”

“ We shall be a melancholy example, but a profitable one, to the youth of future ages. As for me, both the natural affection for my children, as well as that instance of bravery which has led you astray by the false notion of honour, affects me for you. But since either the authority of consuls is to be established by your death, or by your forgiveness to be for ever annulled; I do not think that even you, if you have any of our blood in you, will refuse to restore, by your punishment, the military discipline which has been subverted by your misconduct. ”

“ If we withdraw our army, who is there who can doubt that they will invade our territory not only from a desire of revenge, but from the necessity also imposed on them of plundering from the property of others, since they have lost their own? By such measures then we do not put off the war, but admit it within our own frontiers. What shall I say of that which properly interests the soldiers, for whose interests those worthy tribunes of the commons, all on a sudden, are now so anxious to provide, after they have endeavoured to wrest their pay from them? ”

“ But if at length a desire of liberty stimulates your minds, if a confederacy does subsist, if alliance be equalization of rights, if there be reason now to boast that we are of the same blood as the Romans, of which they were formerly ashamed, if they have such an army of allies, by the junction of which they may double their strength, such a one as their consuls would be unwilling to separate from themselves either in concluding or commencing their own wars; why are not all things equalized? why is not one of the consuls chosen from the Latins? ”

“ This very matter, that there should not be the right of intermarriage between patricians and commons, did not the decemvirs introduce within the last few years to the utmost injury of the commons, on a principle most detrimental to the public? Can there be a greater or more marked insult, than that one portion of the state, as if contaminated, should be deemed unworthy of intermarriage? What else is it than to suffer exile within the same walls, actual rustication? They wish to prevent our being mixed with them by affinity or consanguinity; that our blood be not mingled with theirs. ”

“ Go, lictor, bind those hands, which but a little while since, being armed, established sovereignty for the Roman people. Go, cover the head of the liberator of this city; hang him on the gallows; scourge him, either within the pomœrium, so it be only amid those javelins and spoils of the enemy; or without the pomœrium, only amid the graves of the Curiatii. For whither can you bring this youth, where his own glories must not redeem him from such ignominy of punishment?" The people could not withstand the tears of the father, or the resolution of the son, so undaunted in every danger ”

“ For you the Campanian field shall be ploughed; for you the city of Capua shall be made populous; you shall be to us in the light of founders, parents, ay, even immortal gods. There shall be no colony of your own which shall surpass us in attachment and loyalty to you. Grant to the Campanians, conscript fathers, your nod, and your irresistible favour, and bid us hope that Capua will be safe. With what crowds of persons of all classes attending us do you suppose that we set out from thence—how, think you, did we leave every place full of vows and tears? ”

“ There are laws of war as well of peace; and we have learned to wage them justly not less than bravely. We carry arms not against that age which is spared even when towns are taken, but against men who are themselves armed, and who, not having been injured or provoked by us, attacked the Roman camp at Veii. Those thou hast surpassed, as far as lay in you, by an unprecedented act of villany: I shall conquer them, as I did Veii, by Roman arts, by bravery, labour, and by arms. ”

“ Would any one prefer a vanquished to a victorious city; and suffer Veii now after being captured to enjoy greater prosperity than it had before its capture? Lastly, that they may be forsaken in their country by their fellow-citizens; that no power should ever oblige them to forsake their country and fellow-citizens, and follow Titus Licinius (for he was the tribune of the commons who proposed the measure) as a founder to Veii, abandoning the divine Romulus, the son of a god, the parent and founder of the city of Rome. ”

“ Meanwhile at Rome all arrangements being now made, as far as was possible in such an emergency, for the defence of the citadel, the crowd of aged persons having returned to their houses, awaited the enemy's coming with minds firmly prepared for death. Such of them as had borne curule offices, in order that they may die in the insignia of their former station, honours, and merit, arraying themselves in the most magnificent garments worn by those drawing the chariots of the gods in procession, or by persons riding in triumph, seated themselves in their ivory chairs, in the middle of their halls. ”

“ It is not your cowardice they have despised, nor their own valour they have confided in; for having been so often routed and put to flight, stripped of their camp, amerced in their land, sent under the yoke, they know both themselves and you. The discord among the several orders is the bane of this city; the contests of the patricians and commons have raised their spirits; whilst we have neither bounds in the pursuit of power, nor you in that of liberty, whilst you are tired of patrician, these of plebeian magistrates. ”

“ After the expulsion of the kings, we certainly admitted the Claudian family from the Sabine country not only into citizenship, but even into the number of the patricians. Can a man from a foreigner be made a patrician, then a consul? shall a Roman citizen, if he belong to the commons, be precluded from all hope of the consulate? Do we then deem it impossible that a man of the commons can be a person of fortitude and activity, qualified to excel both in peace and war, tyke to Numa, Lucius Tarquinius, and Servius Tullius? ”

“ From which quarter if any alarm of danger be heard, did it please them that the state, left without a patrician magistrate, should be taken by surprise? that there should be no army, nor general to enlist one? Will they repel a foreign war by an intestine one? And if they both meet, the Roman state can scarcely be saved, even by the aid of the gods, from being overwhelmed. That they, by resigning each a portion of their strict right, should establish concord by a compromise; the patricians, by suffering military tribunes with consular authority to be elected ”

“ I beg you, Tarquinii, tribunes of the commons, suppose that I, an individual citizen, should call out in reply from the middle of the assembly, With your good leave be it permitted us to select out of these measures those which we deem to be beneficial to us; to reject the others. It will not be permitted, he says. Must you enact concerning the interest of money and the lands, that which tends to the interest of you all; and must not this prodigy take place in the city of Rome, that of seeing Lucius Sextius and this Caius Licinius consuls, a thing which you loathe and abominate? ”

“ To whatever direction the shouts of the enemy, the cries of women and children, the crackling of the flames, and the crash of falling houses, had called their attention, thither, terrified at every incident, they turned their thoughts, faces, and eyes, as if placed by fortune to be spectators of their falling country, and as if left as protectors of no other of their effects, except their own persons: so much more to be commiserated than any others who were ever besieged, because, shut out from their country, they were besieged, beholding all their effects in the power of the enemy. ”

“ Would any one believe that persons, who possessed such merits, had suddenly become enemies without cause? or if they had committed any act in a hostile manner, that they had, through design rather than under the influence of error from frenzy, so acted, as to cancel their former acts of kindness by recent injuries, more especially when conferred on persons so grateful, and that they would choose to themselves as enemies the Roman people, now in the most flourishing state and most successful in war, whose friendship they had cultivated when they were distressed? ”

“ Has he been so successful in corrupting you, who, by his authority, has not influenced your slaves? When the enemies are over our heads, is it your pleasure that arms should be given up, and laws be proposed?" [Pg 179] Then directing his discourse to the populace: "If, Romans, no concern for your city, for yourselves, moves you, at least revere the gods of your country, now made captive by the enemy. Jupiter, the best and greatest, Queen Juno, and Minerva, the other gods and goddesses, are besieged; the camp of slaves now holds the tutelary gods of the state. ”

“ Porsena entertained a hope that by continuing the siege he should take the city, when C. Mucius, a young nobleman, to whom it seemed a disgrace that the Roman people, when enslaved under kings, had never been confined within their walls in any war, nor by any enemy, should now when a free people be blocked up by these very Etrurians whose armies they had often routed, thinking that such indignity should be avenged by some great and daring effort, at first designed of his own accord to penetrate into the enemy's camp. ”

“ The aid of tribunes, right of appeal to the people, the acts of the commons made binding on the patricians under the pretext of equalizing the laws, the subversion of our privileges, we have borne and still bear. What termination is there to be to our dissensions? when shall it be allowed us to have a united city? when to have one common country? When defeated we submit with more resignation than you when victorious. Is it enough for you, that you are objects of terror to us? The Aventine is taken against us; against us the Sacred mount is seized. ”