peak the truth rather than what is pleasing.
I would indeed like to meet with your approval, Quirites; but I am
much more anxious that you should be preserved, whatever sentiments
you shall entertain toward me. It has been so ordained by nature, that
he who addresses a crowd for his own private interest, is more welcome
than the man whose mind has nothing in view but the public interest
unless perhaps you suppose that those public sycophants those
flatterers of the commons, who neither suffer you to take up arms nor
to live in peace, excite and work you up for your own interests. When
excited, you are to them sources either of position or of profit: and,
because, when the orders are in accord, they see that they themselves
are of no importance in anything, they prefer to be leaders of a bad
cause, of tumults and sedition, rather than of no cause at all. If
you can at last become wearied of all this, and if you are willing to
resume the habits practised by your forefathers of old, and formerly
by yourselves, in place of these new ones, I am ready to submit to
any punishment, if I do not in a few days rout and put to flight, and
strip of their camp those devastators of our lands, and transfer from
our gates and walls to their cities this terror of war, by which you
are now thrown into consternation."

Scarcely ever was the speech of a popular tribune more acceptable to
the commons than this of a most austere consul on that occasion. The
young men also, who, during such alarms, had been accustomed to employ
the refusal to enlist as the sharpest weapon against the patricians,
began to turn their attention to war and arms: and the flight of the
rustics, and those who had been robbed and wounded in the country, by
announcing events more revolting even than what was before their eyes,
filled the whole city with exasperation. When they came into the
senate, there all, turning to Quinctius, looked upon him as the only
champion of the majesty of Rome: and the leading senators declared
that his harangue was worthy of the consular authority, worthy of so
many consulships formerly borne by him, worthy of his whole life, full
of honours frequently enjoyed, more frequently deserved. That other
consuls had either flattered the commons by betraying the dignity of
the patricians, or by harshly maintaining the rights of their order,
had rendered the multitude more exasperated by their efforts to subdue
them: that Titus Quinctius had deliv