§3.71.1victoriam honestam ex hostibus partam turpe domi de finibus sociorum iudicium populi deformavit.
The honorable victory won over the enemy was disfigured at home by a shameful decision of the people concerning the boundaries of their allies.
§3.71.2Aricini atque Ardeates de ambiguo agro cum saepe bello certassent, multis in vicem cladibus fessi iudicem populum Romanum cepere.
The Aricini and the Ardeates, having often contended in war over a disputed territory, weary of many mutual disasters, chose the Roman people as their arbitrator.
§3.71.3cum ad causam orandam venissent, concilio populi a magistratibus dato magna contentione actum.
When they had come to plead their cause, an assembly of the people having been granted by the magistrates, the case was conducted with great contention.
iamque editis testibus cum tribus vocari et populum inire suffragium oporteret, consurgit P. Scaptius de plebe magno natu et “si licet” inquit, “consules, de re publica dicere, errare ego populum in hac causa non patiar.
And now, the witnesses having been produced, when the tribes ought to have been called and the people to enter upon the voting, P.
” §3.71.4cum ut vanum eum negarent consules audiendum esse vociferantemque prodi publicam causam submoveri iussissent, tribunos appellat.
Scaptius, a plebeian of advanced age, rose and said: "If it is permitted, consuls, to speak concerning the state, I will not suffer the people to err in this cause." When the consuls denied that he should be heard, rejecting him as an idle babbler, and had ordered him to be removed as he cried out that the public cause was being betrayed, he appealed to the tribunes.
§3.71.5tribuni, ut fere semper reguntur a multitudine magis quam regunt, dedere cupidae audiendi plebi, ut, quae vellet, Scaptius diceret.
The tribunes, who are almost always ruled by the multitude rather than ruling them, granted to the plebs, who were eager to hear, that Scaptius might say what he wished.
§3.71.6ibi infit annum se tertium et octogesimum agere et in eo agro, de quo agitur, militasse, non iuvenem, vicesima iam stipendia merentem, cum ad Coriolos sit bellatum.
Thereupon he began to speak, saying that he was in his eighty-third year, and had served in that territory which was in dispute, not as a youth, but already serving his twentieth campaign when the war was waged at Corioli.
eo rem se vetustate oblitteratam, ceterum suae memoriae infixam adferre, §3.71.7agrum, de quo ambigitur, finium Coriolanorum fuisse captisque Coriolis iure belli publicum populi Romani factum.
Therefore, he brought forward a matter obliterated by age, but fixed in his own memory: that the land in dispute had belonged to the territory of Corioli, and that upon the capture of Corioli it had become by the law of war the public property of the Roman people.
mirari se, quonam ore Ardeates Aricinique, cuius agri ius numquam usurpaverint incolumi Coriolana re, eum se a populo Romano, quem pro domino iudicem fecerint, intercepturos sperent.
He wondered with what face the Ardeates and Aricini, who had never claimed the right to that land while the state of Corioli was intact, hoped to snatch it from the Roman people, whom they had made their arbitrator instead of its master.
§3.71.8sibi exiguum vitae tempus superesse; non potuisse se tamen inducere in animum, quin, quem agrum miles pro parte virili manu cepisset, eum senex quoque voce, qua una posset, vindicaret.
For himself, but a brief span of life remained; yet he could not bring himself to fail, as an old man, to claim with his voice—the only means he could—the land which as a soldier he had taken with his hand to the best of his manly power.
magnopere se suadere populo, ne inutili pudore suam ipse causam damnaret.
He strongly urged the people not to condemn their own cause through a useless sense of shame.