If you did not realize, fellow citizens, what a difference there is between the rights left you by your forefathers and this slavery imposed upon you by Sulla, I should be obliged to make a long speech and to inform you because of what wrongs, and how often, the plebeians took up arms and seceded from the patricians; and how they won the tribunes of the commons as the defenders of all their rights. But as it is, I have only to encourage you and to precede you on the road which, in my opinion, leads to the recovery of your liberties. I am not unaware how great is the power of the nobles, whom I alone, powerless, am trying to drive from their tyranny by the empty semblance of a magistracy[2]; and I know how much more secure a faction of wicked men is than any upright man alone. But in addition to the fair hopes which you have inspired and which have dispelled my fear, I have decided that defeat in a struggle for liberty is for a brave man better than never to have struggled at all.
And yet all the others who were elected to maintain your rights have been led by personal interest, by hope, or by bribery to turn all their
