om, I pray, did
these most dastardly enemies despise? Us, consuls, or you, Quirites?
If the fault lies in us, take away the command from those who are
unworthy of it; and, if that is not enough, further inflict punishment
on us. If the fault is yours, may there be none of gods or men to
punish your offences: do you yourselves only repent of them. It is not
your cowardice they have despised, nor their own valour that they have
put their trust in: having been so often routed and put to flight,
stripped of their camp, mulcted in their land, sent under the yoke,
they know both themselves and you. It is the discord among the several
orders that is the curse of this city, the contests between the
patricians and commons. While we have neither bounds in the pursuit of
power, nor you in that of liberty, while you are wearied of patrician,
we of plebeian magistrates, they have taken courage. In the name of
Heaven, what would you have? You desired tribunes of the commons; we
granted them for the sake of concord. You longed for decemvirs;
we suffered them to be created. You became weary of decemvirs; we
compelled them to resign office. Your resentment against these same
persons when they became private citizens still continuing, we
suffered men of the highest family and rank to die or go into exile.
You wished asecond time to create tribunes of the commons; you created
them. You wished to elect consuls attached to your party; and,
although we saw that it was unjust to the patricians, we have even
resigned ourselves to see a patrician magistracy conceded as an
offering to the people. 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 endured and still endure. What end is there to be to our
dissensions? When shall it be allowed us to have a united city, one
common country? We, when defeated, submit with greater 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. When the Esquiline was almost taken by the
enemy, no one defended it, and when the Volscian foe was scaling the
rampart, no one drove him off: it is against us you behave like men,
against us you are armed.

"Come, when you have blockaded the senate-house here, and have made
the forum the seat of war, and filled the pris