4.3
At the very time when this
was going on in the senate, Canuleius delivered the
following speech in defence of his laws and in
opposition to the consuls: "I fancy, Quirites, that
I have often noticed in the past how greatly the
patricians despise you, how unworthy they deem you
to live in the same City, within the same walls, as
they. Now, however, it is perfectly obvious, seeing
how bitter an opposition they have raised to our
proposed laws. For what is our purpose in framing
them except to remind them that we are their
fellow-citizens, and though we do not possess the
same power, we still inhabit the same country? In
one of these laws we demand the right of
intermarriage, a right usually granted to neighbours
and foreigners -indeed we have granted citizenship,
which is more than intermarriage, even to a
conquered enemy -in the other we are bringing
forward nothing new, but simply demanding back what
belongs to the people and claiming that the Roman
people should confer its honours on whom it will.
What possible reason is there why they should
embroil heaven and earth, why recently in the
Senate-house I was on the point of being subjected
to personal violence, why they declare they will not
keep their hands off, and threaten to attack our
inviolable authority? Will this City be no longer
able to stand, is our dominion at an end, if a free
vote is allowed to the Roman people so that they may
entrust the consulship to whomsoever they will, and
no plebeian may be shut out from the hope of
attaining the highest honour if only he be worthy of
the highest honour? Does the phrase 'Let no plebeian
be made consul' mean just the same as 'No slave or
freedman shall be consul'? Do you ever realise in
what contempt you are living? They would rob you of
your share in this daylight, if they could. They are
indignant because you breathe and utter speech and
wear the form of men. Why! Heaven forgive me, they
actually say that it would be an act of impiety for
a plebeian to be made consul! Though we are not
allowed access to the 'Fasti' or the records of the
pontiffs, do we not, pray, know what every stranger
knows, that the consuls have simply taken the place
of the kings, and possess no right or privilege
which was not previously vested in the kings? I
suppose you have never heard tell that Numa
Pompilius, who was not only no patrician but not
even a Roman citizen, was summoned from the land of
the Sabines, and after being accepted by the people
and confirmed by the senate, reigned as king of
Rome? Or that, after him, L. Tarquinius, who
belonged to no Roman house, not even to an Italian
one, being the son of Demaratus of Corinth, who had
settled in Tarquinii, was made king while the sons
of Ancus were still alive? Or that, after him again,
Servius Tullius, the illegitimate son of a female
slave captured at Corniculum, gained the crown by
sheer merit and ability? Why need I mention the
Sabine Titus Tatius, with whom Romulus himself, the
Father of the City, shared his throne? As long as no
class of person in which conspicuous merit appeared
was rejected, the Roman dominion grew. Are you then
to regard a plebeian consul with disgust, when our
ancestors showed no aversion to strangers as their
kings? Not even after the expulsion of the kings was
the City closed to foreign merit. The Claudian
house, at all events, who migrated from the Sabines,
was received by us not only into citizenship, but
even into the ranks of the patricians. Shall a man
who was an alien become a patrician and afterwards
consul, and a Roman citizen, if he belongs to the
plebs, be cut off from all hope of the consulship?
Do we believe that it is impossible for a plebeian
to be brave and energetic and capable both in peace
and war, or if there be such a man, are we not to
allow him to touch the helm of the State; are we to
have, by preference, consuls like the decemvirs,
those vilest of mortals -who, nevertheless, were
all patricians -rather than men who resemble the
best of the kings, new men though they were?