Ab urbe condita

men? Will you always listen with approving ears to everything which your magistrate says and with hostile ears to whatever is said by any of us?” “His language is utterly unbecoming a citizen of a free

republic. Well, and what sort of a proposal is it, in heaven's name, that they are indignant with you for having rejected? One, Quirites, which quite matches his language. “I am proposing,” he says, “that you shall not be allowed to appoint whom you please as

consuls.” What else does his proposal mean? He is laying down the law that one consul at least shall be elected from the plebs, and is depriving you of the power of electing two

patricians. If there were to-day a war with Etruria such as when Porsena encamped on the Janiculum, or such as that in recent times with the Gauls, when everything round us except the Capitol and the Citadel were in the enemy's hands, and, in the press of such a war, L. Sextius were standing for the consulship with M. Furius Camillus and some other patrician, could you tolerate Sextius being quite certain of election and Camillus in danger of

defeat? Is this what you call an equal distribution of honours, when it is lawful for two plebeians to be made consuls, but not for two patricians; when one must necessarily be taken from the plebs, while it is open to reject every patrician? What is this comradeship, this equality of yours? Do you count it little to come into a share of what you have had no share in hitherto, unless whilst you are seeking to obtain the half you can carry off the

whole? He says, “I am afraid if it is left open for two patricians to be elected, you will never elect a plebeian.” What is this but saying, “Because you would not of your own will elect unworthy persons, I will impose upon you the necessity of electing them against your

will”? What follows? That if only one plebeian is standing with two patricians he has not to thank the people for his election; he may say he was appointed by the law not by their vote.”

“Their aim is not to sue for honours but to extort them from you, and they will get the greatest favours from you without showing the gratitude due even for the smallest. They prefer seeking posts of honour by trusting to accident rather than by personal merit.

There is many a man, too proud to submit his merits and claims to inspection and examination, who would think it quite fair that he alone among his competitors should be quite certain of attaining a post of honour, who would withdraw himself from your judgment and transfer your free votes into compulsory and servile ones.