ch. 193.19 [Note]
No sooner were
order and quiet restored than the tribunes began to press
upon the senators the necessity of redeeming the promise made
by Publius Valerius; they urged Claudius to free his
colleague's manes [Note] from the guilt of deception by allowing
the Law to be proceeded with. The consul refused to allow it
until he had secured the election of a colleague. The
contest went on till the election was held. In the month of
December, after the utmost exertions on the part of the
patricians, L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, the father of Caeso,
was elected consul, and at once took up his office. The
plebeians were dismayed at the prospect of having as consul a
man incensed against them, and powerful in the warm support
of the senate, in his own personal merits, and in his three
children, not one of whom was Caeso's inferior
in loftiness of mind, while they were his superiors in
exhibiting
the prudence and moderation where necessary. When he entered
on his magistracy he continually delivered harangues from the
tribunal, in which he censured the senate as energetically as
he put down the plebs. It was, he said, through the apathy of
that order that the tribunes of the plebs, now perpetually
in office, acted as kings in their speeches and accusations,
as though they were living, not in the commonwealth of Rome,
but in some wretched ill-regulated family. Courage,
resolution, all that makes youth distinguished at home and in
the battlefield, had been expelled and banished from Rome
with his son Caeso. Loquacious agitators, sowers of discord,
made tribunes for the second and third time in succession,
were living by means of infamous practices in regal
licentiousness. Did that fellow, he asked, Aulus
Verginius, because he did not happen to be in the Capitol,
deserve less punishment than Appius Herdonius? Considerably
more, by Jove, if any choose to form a true estimate of the
matter. Herdonius, if he did nothing else, avowed himself an
enemy and in a measure summoned you to take up arms; this
man, by denying the existence of a war, deprived you of your
arms, and exposed you defenceless to the mercy of your slaves
and exiles. And did you—without disrespect to C. Claudius
and the dead P. Valerius, I would ask—did you advance against
the Capitol before you cleared these enemies out of the
Forum? It is an outrage on gods and men, that when there
were enemies in the Citadel, in the Capitol, and the leader
of the slaves and exiles, after profaning everything, had
taken up his quarters in the very shrine of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus, it should be at Tusculum, not at Rome, that arms
were first taken up. It was doubtful whether the Citadel of
Rome would be delivered by the Tusculan general, L. Mamilius,
or by the consuls, P. Valerius and C. Claudius. We, who had
not allowed the Latins to arm, even to defend themselves
against invasion, would have been taken and destroyed, had
not these very Latins taken up arms unbidden. This, tribunes,
is what you call protecting the plebs, exposing it to be
helplessly butchered by the enemy! If the meanest member of
your order, which you have as it were severed from the rest
of the people and made into a province, a State of your own—
if such an one, I say, were to report to you that his house
was beset by armed slaves, you would, I presume, think that
you ought to render him assistance; was not Jupiter Optimus
Maximus, when shut in by armed
slaves and exiles, worthy to receive any human aid? Do these
fellows demand that their persons shall be sacred and
inviolable when the very gods themselves are neither sacred
nor inviolable in their eyes? But, steeped as you are in
crimes against gods and men, you give out that you will carry
your Law this year. Then, most assuredly, if you do carry it,
the day when I was made consul will be a far worse day for
the State than that on which P. Valerius perished. Now I give
you notice, Quirites, the very first thing that my colleague
and myself intend to do is to march the legions against the
Volscians and Aequi. By some strange fatality, we find the
gods more propitious when we are at war than when we are at
peace. It is better to infer from what has occurred in the
past than to learn by actual experience how great the danger
from those States would have been had they known that the
Capitol was in the hands of exiles.
