3.19
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 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 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 battle-field, 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."