HKB
mocking insult the devastation of the land. When they marched back thence to Corbio unmolested and driving their booty before them, Quinctius the consul summoned the people to an assembly.
There I find that he spoke to this effect: "Though I am conscious to myself of no fault, Quirites, yet it is with the greatest shame I have come forward to your assembly. To think that you should know this, that this should be handed down on record to posterity, that the Æquans and Volscians a short time since scarcely a match for the Hernicans, have with impunity come with arms in their hands to the walls of Rome, in the fourth consulate of Titus Quinctius! Had I known that this disgrace was reserved for this year, above all others, though we have now long been living in such a manner, and such is the state of affairs, that my mind can forebode nothing good, I would have avoided this honour either by exile or by death, if there had been no other means of escaping it. Then, if men of courage had held those arms, which were at our gates, Rome could have been taken during my consulate. I have had sufficient honours, enough and more than enough of life: I ought to have died in my third consulate. Whom, 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.