worthy they deemed you to dwell in the one city and
within the same walls with them; but on the present occasion most
clearly, in their having risen up so determinedly in opposition to those
propositions of ours: in which what else do we do, but remind them that
we are their fellow citizens, and that though we possess not the same
power, we inhabit the same city? In the one we demand intermarriage, a
thing which is usually granted to neighbours and foreigners: we have
granted even to vanquished enemies the right of citizenship, which is
more than the right of intermarriage. In the other we propose nothing
new; we only reclaim and demand that which is the people's; that the
Roman people may confer honours on whomsoever they may please. And what
in the name of goodness is it for which they embroil heaven and earth?
why was almost an attack made on me just now in the senate? why do they
say that they will not restrain themselves from violence, and threaten
that they will insult an office, sacred and inviolable? Shall this city
no longer be able to stand, and is the empire at stake, if the right of
free suffrage is granted to the Roman people, to confer the consulship
on whomsoever they may please, and if a plebeian, though he may be
worthy of the highest honour, is not precluded from the hope of
attaining that honour? and is this of the same import, whether a
plebeian be made a consul, as if any one were to propose a slave or the
son of a slave to be consul? Do you perceive in what contempt you live?
they would take from you a participation in this light, if it were
permitted them. That you breathe, that you enjoy the faculty of speech,
that you possess the forms of human beings, excites their indignation.
Nay even, as I hope for mercy, they say that it is contrary to religion
that a plebeian should be made consul. I pray, though we are not
admitted to the annals, nor to the commentaries of the pontiffs, do we
not know even those things which strangers know? that consuls have
succeeded kings? and that they possess no privilege, no majesty which
was not formerly inherent in kings? Do you suppose that we ever heard it
mentioned that Numa Pompilius, who not only was not a patrician, but not
even a citizen of Rome, was sent for from the country of the Sabines by
order of the people, with the approbation of the senate, and that he was
made king at Rome? that afterwards Lucius Tarquinius, who was not only
not of Roman, but not eve