Ab urbe condita

Was Canuleius, forsooth, to have the audacity to give out before the senate that unless it was prepared to accept his conditions, like those of a conqueror, he would stop a levy being held? What else was that but threatening to betray his country and allowing it to be attacked and captured? What courage would his words inspire, not in the Roman plebs but in the Volscians and Aequi and Veientines!

Would they not hope, with Canuleius as their leader, to be able to scale the Capitol and the Citadel, if the tribunes, after stripping the senate of its rights and its authority, deprived it also of its courage? The consuls were ready to be their leaders against criminal citizens before they led them against the enemy in arms.

At the very time when this was going on in the senate, Canuleius delivered the following speech in defence of his laws and in opposition to the consuls:

“I fancy, Quirites, that I have often noticed in the past how greatly the patricians despise you, how unworthy they deem you to live in the same City, within the same walls, as they.

Now, however, it is perfectly obvious, seeing how bitter an opposition they have raised to our proposed laws. For what is our purpose in framing them except to remind them that we are their fellow-citizens, and though we do not possess the same power, we still inhabit the same country?

In one of these laws we demand the right of intermarriage, a right usually granted to neighbours and foreigners-indeed we have granted citizenship, which is more than intermarriage,