of assembly.[1] Then (not to attempt to urge you to those manly deeds[2] by which your ancestors gained their tribunes of the commons, a magistracy previously patrician,[3] and a suffrage independent of the sanction of the patricians) since all the power is in your hands, citizens, and since you undoubtedly can execute or fail to execute on your own account the orders to which you now submit for the profit of others, I would ask you whether you are waiting for the advice of Jupiter or some other one of the gods. That supreme power of the consuls, and those potent decrees of the senate, you yourselves ratify, citizens, by executing them; and you hasten voluntarily to increase and strengthen their despotism over you. I do not urge you to avenge your wrongs, but rather to seek quiet; and it is not because I desire discord, as they charge, but because I wish to put an end to it, that I demand restitution according to the law of nations. If they persist in refusing this, I do not advise war or secession, but merely that you should refuse longer to shed your blood for them. Let them hold their offices and administer them in their own way, let them seek triumphs, let them lead their ancestral portraits,[4] against Mithridates, Sertorius, and what is left of the exiles, but let those who have no share in the profits be free also from dangers and toil.
But perhaps your services have been paid for by that hastily enacted law for the distribution of grain, a law by which they have valued all your liberties
- ↑ That is, while they are being reminded of it by popular orators.
- ↑ For quo, instead of quibus, cf. Jug. cii. 10.
- ↑ That is, a share in a magistracy which had previously (modo) been confined to the patricians. The reference is to the consulship, to which plebeians became eligible by the bill of Licinius and Sextius in 377 B.C.
- ↑ That is to say, let them lead the portraits of their ancestors against the enemy, in lieu of soldiers.
