substance or in fortune. Has
any one ever brought back to his wife and children aught save hatred,
quarrels, grudges public and private? from which (and their effects) you
have been ever protected, not by your own valour and integrity, but by
the aid of others. But, when you served under the guidance of us
consuls, not under your tribunes, and the enemy trembled at your shout
in the field of battle, not the Roman patricians in the assembly, booty
being obtained, land taken from the enemy, with a plentiful stock of
wealth and glory, both public and private, you used to return home to
your household gods in triumph: now you allow the enemy to go off laden
with your property. Continue immovably tied to your assemblies, live in
the forum; the necessity of taking the field, which ye avoid, still
follows you. Was it too hard on you to march against the AEquans and the
Volscians? The war is at your gates: if it is not repelled from thence,
it will soon be within your walls, and will scale the citadel and
Capitol, and follow you into your very houses. Two years ago the senate
ordered a levy to be held, and the army to march to Algidum; yet we sit
down listless at home, quarrelling with each other like women;
delighting in present peace, and not seeing that after that short-lived
intermission complicated wars are sure to return. That there are other
topics more pleasing than these, I well know; but even though my own
mind did not prompt me to it, necessity obliges me to speak that which
is true instead of that which is pleasing. I would indeed be anxious to
please you, Romans; but I am much more anxious that ye should be
preserved, whatever sentiments ye shall entertain towards me. It has
been so ordained by nature, that he who addresses a multitude for his
own private interest, is more pleasing 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, incite and work you up
for your own interests. When excited, you are to them sources either of
honour or of profit: and because, during concord between the several
orders, they see that themselves are of no importance on any side, they
wish to be leaders of a bad cause rather than of no cause whatever, of
tumults, and of sedition. Of which state of things, if a tedium can at
length enter your minds, and if ye are willing to