Ab urbe condita

But what premium have we to pay that we may always have you as tribunes of the plebs? “That you adopt all our measures en bloc, whether you agree with them or not, whether they are useful or the reverse.”

“Now I ask you —you Tarquinian tribunes [*](Tarquinian tribunes=tribunes showing the same tyrannical and despotic spirit as the old Tarquins) of the plebs —to listen to me. Suppose that I, as a citizen, call out from the middle of the Assembly, “Allow us, with your kind permission, to choose out of these proposed measures what we think beneficial for us and reject the

others.” “No,” he says, “you will not be allowed to do so. You would pass the measure about usury and the one about the distribution of land, for these concern you all; but you would not allow the City of Rome to witness the portentous sight of L. Sextius and C. Licinius as consuls, a prospect you regard with detestation and loathing. Either accept all, or I propose

none.” Just as if a man were to place poison together with food before some one famished with hunger and bid him either abstain from what would support his life or mix with it what would bring death. If this were a free State, would not hundreds of voices have exclaimed, “Be gone with your tribuneships and proposals.” What? If you do not bring in reforms which it is to the people's advantage to adopt, is there no one else who

will? If any patrician, if even a Claudius whom they detest still more —were to say, “Either accept all, or I propose none,” which of you, Quirites, would tolerate it? Will you never have more regard for measures than for

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.”