History of Rome

​I understand that he spoke there to this effect: “Although I am conscious of no guilt, Quirites, yet it is with the greatest shame that I have come forward into your sight. That you know this, that this will be handed down to the memory of posterity, that the Aequi and Volsci, scarcely a match just now for the Hernici, came armed with impunity to the walls of the city of Rome, in the fourth consulship of Titus Quinctius. This disgrace, ​although for a long time now life has been lived in such a way that the mind divines nothing good, if I had known that this was threatening this year of all years, I would have avoided it either by exile or by death, if there had been no other escape from the office.

​Therefore, if real men had held those arms which were at our gates, Rome could have been captured during my consulship. I had had enough of honors, enough and more than enough of life; I ought to have died in my third consulship. Whom, pray, did the most cowardly of the enemy despise?

​Us consuls, or you, Quirites? If the fault is in us, take away the command from those who are unworthy; and if that is too little, demand punishment besides;

​if in you, let there be no one of gods or men, Quirites, to punish your sins; may you only yourselves repent of them. They did not despise your cowardice, nor did they trust in their own valor; for, having been routed and put to flight so many times, stripped of their camps, fined of their land, and sent under the yoke, they knew both themselves and you;

​the discord of the orders and the poison of this city, the contests between the patricians and the plebs—while there is limit neither to our command nor to your liberty, while you are weary of patrician magistrates and we of plebeian ones—have raised their spirits.

​By the faith of the gods, what do you want for yourselves? You coveted tribunes of the plebs; for the sake of concord we conceded them. You desired decemvirs; we allowed them to be created. You became weary of the decemvirs; we compelled them to depart from office.

​While your anger remained against those same men when they were private citizens, we allowed the most noble and most honored men to die and to go into exile.

​You wished to create tribunes of the plebs again; you created them. You wished to make consuls of your own party; although it seemed unjust to the patricians, we permitted even the patrician office to become a gift to the plebs. The tribunician aid, the appeal to the people, the decrees of the plebs imposed upon the patricians, under the title of equalizing the laws, our rights having been oppressed, we have borne and are bearing.

​What limit will there be to our discords? When will it be allowed to have one city, when to have this as a common fatherland? We, the conquered, remain quiet with a more even mind than you, the conquerors.

​Is it not enough for us that you must be feared? Against us the Aventine is seized, against us the Sacred Mount is occupied, and we have seen the Esquiline almost captured by the enemy, and no one repelled the Volscian enemy climbing onto the rampart; against us you are men, against us you are armed.”