Ab urbe condita

And yet I hardly dare mention the word “honour” whilst the enemy ventures to mock us with every kind of insult, as if we were hiding ourselves like women behind our rampart, and —what grieves us much more —even you our commander have made up your mind that your army is without courage, without weapons, without hands to use them, and before you have put us to the proof have so despaired of us that you look upon yourself as the commander of cripples and weaklings.

What other reason can we believe there to be, why you, a veteran commander, a most gallant soldier, should be as they say sitting with your arms folded? However the case may be, it is more true to say that you appear to doubt our courage than that we doubt yours.”

“But if this is not your doing, but a piece of State policy, if it is some concerted scheme of the patricians and not war with the Gauls that is keeping us in banishment from the City and from our household gods, then I ask you to regard what I am now going to say as addressed not by soldiers to their commander but to the patricians by the plebs, who say that as you have your projects so they will have theirs.