Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

many under command,
your

joined to that of the - is it not sufficient? Let us fight, let us die, if we must, - but let us not conquer unworthily. Adrastus, the impious Adrastus, is in our power, provided provided we disdain to imitate the cowardice and treachery which have sealed his ruin!

11. TITUS QUINTIUS AGAINST QUARRELS BETWEEN THE SENATE AND THE PEOPLE. Abridgment from Livy.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

THOUGH I am conscious of no fault, O Romans, it is yet with the utmost shame I have come forward to your Assembly. You have seen it posterity will know it that, in my fourth consulate, the Equans and Volscians came in arms to the very gates of Rome, and went away unchastised! Had I foreseen that such an ignominy had been reserved for my official year, that Rome might have been taken while I was Consul,· I would have shunned the office, either by exile or by death. Yes; I have had honors enough,—of life more than enough! I should have died in my third consulate. Whom did these most dastardly enemies despise? us, Consuls, or you, citizens? If we are in fault, depose us, — punish us as we deserve. If you, Romans, are to blame, may neither Gods nor men make you suffer for your offences! only may you repent. No, Romans, the confidence of our enemies is not from a belief in their own courage, or in your cowardice. They have been too often vanquished, not to know both themselves and you. Discord, discord amongst ourselves, is the ruin of this city. The eternal disputes between the Senate and the People are the sole cause of our misfortunes.

In the name of Heaven, what is it, Romans, you would have? You desired Tribunes of the commons. For the sake of concord, we granted Tribunes. You were eager to have Decemvirs. We suffered them to be created. You grew weary of Decemvirs. We compelled them to abdicate. You insisted on the restoration of the Tribuneship. We yielded. You invaded our rights. We have borne, and still bear. What termination is there to be to these dissensions? When shall we have a united city? When one common country? With the enemy at our gates, with the Volscian foe scaling your rampart, there is no one to hinder it. But against us you are valiant, - against us you diligently take up arms! Come on, then. Besiege the Senate-house. Make a camp of the Forum. Fill the jails with our chief nobles. Then sally out with the same determined spirit against the enemy. Does your resolution fail? Look, then, to see your lands ravaged, your houses plundered and in flames, the whole country laid waste with fire and sword.

Extinguish, O Romans, these fatal divisions! Break the spell of this enchantment, which renders you powerless and inactive! If you will but summon up the ancient Roman courage, and follow your Consuls to the field, I will submit to any punishment, if I do not rout and put to flight these ravagers of our territories, and transfer to their own cities the terror of war.

12. CAIUS MARIUS TO THE ROMANS, ON THE OBJECTIONS TO MAKING HIM GENERAL.-Original Paraphrase from Sallust.

You have committed to my conduct, O Romans, the war against Jugurtha. The Patricians are offended at this. "He has no family statues," they exclaim. "He can point to no illustrious line of ancestors!" What then? Will dead ancestors, will motionless statues, help fight your battles? Will it avail your General to appeal to these, in the perilous hour? Rare wisdom would it be, my countrymen, to intrust the command of your army to one whose only qualification for it would be the virtue of his forefathers! to one untried and unexperienced, but of most unexceptionable family! who could not show a solitary scar, but any number of ancestral statues! who knew not the first rudiments of war, but was very perfect in pedigrees! Truly I have known of such holiday heroes,-raised, because of family considerations, to a command for which they were not fitted, — who, when the moment for action arrived, were obliged, in their ignorance and trepidation, to give to some inferior officer -to some despised Plebeian the ordering of every movement.

I submit it to you, Romans,-is Patrician pride or Plebeian experience the safer reliance? The actions of which my opponents have merely read, I have achieved or shared in. What they have seen written in books, I have seen written on battle-fields with steel and blood. They object to my humble birth. They sneer at my lowly origin. Impotent objection! Ignominious sneer! Where but in the spirit of a man (bear witness, Gods!), - where but in the spirit, can his nobility be lodged? and where his dishonor, but in his own cowardly inaction, or his unworthy deeds? Tell these railers at my obscure extraction, their haughty lineage could not make them noble-my humble birth could never make me base.

I profess no indifference to noble descent. It is a good thing to number great men among one's ancestry. But when a descendant is dwarfed in the comparison, it should be accounted a shame rather than a boast. These Patricians cannot despise me, if they would, since their titles of nobility date from ancestral services similar to those which I myself have rendered. And what if I can show no family statues? I can show the standards, the armor, and the spoils, which I myself have wrested from the vanquished. I can show the scars of many wounds received in combating the enemies of Rome. These are my statues! These the honors I can boast of! Not an accidental inheritance, like theirs; but earned by toil, by abstinence, by valor; amid clouds of dust and seas of blood; scenes of action, in which these effeminate Patricians, who would now depreciate me in your esteem, have never dared to appear, no, not even as spectators! Romans, are my credentials; here, my titles of nobility; here, my claims to the generalship of your army! Tell me, are they not as respectable, are they not as valid, are they not as deserving of your confidence and reward, as those which any Patrician of them all can offer?

Here,

13. CAIUS GRACCHUS, CITED BEFORE THE CENSORS, APPEALS TO THE PEOPLE. - Original Adaptation from J. S. Knowles.

It

appears

I am cited here because I have returned

Without my General's leave, and for the crime
Of having raised the tumult at Fregella.
First, with the first. I have remained my time;
Nay, I have over-served it by the laws, -
The laws which Caius Gracchus dares not break.
But, Censors, let that pass. I will propose
A better question for your satisfaction:

"How have I served my time?" I 'll answer that:
"How have I served my time? For mine own gain,
Or that of the Republic?" What was my office?
Quæstor. What was its nature? Lucrative,-
So lucrative, that all my predecessors

Who went forth poor returned home very rich.
I went forth poor enough,

But have returned still poorer than I went.
Ye citizens of Rome, behold what favor

Your masters show your brethren! I have borne
My country's arms with honor; over-served
My time; returned in poverty, that might
Have amassed treasures, and they thus reward me:-
Prefer a charge against me without proof,
Direct or indirect; without a testimony,
Weighty or light; without an argument,
Idle or plausible; without as much
Of feasibility as would suffice

To feed suspicion's phantom! Why is this?
How have I bought this hatred? When my brother,
Tiberius Gracchus, fell beneath their blows,

I called them not assassins! When his friends
Fell sacrifices to their after-vengeance,

I did not style them butchers! - did not name them
The proud, perfidious, insolent Patricians!

Ye men of Rome, there is no favor, now,
For justice! Grudgingly her dues are granted!
Your great men boast no more the love of country.
They count their talents; measure their domains;
Enlarge their palaces; dress forth their banquets;
Awake their lyres and timbrels; and with their floods
Of ripe Falernian drown the little left

Of virtue! - Romans, I would be your Tribune.
Fear not, Censors! I would raise no tumult;
This hand 's the first to arm against the man,
Whoe'er he be, that favors civil discord:

I have no gust for blood, nor for oppression !
I sacrifice to Justice and to Mercy!

The laws! the laws! Of common right the guard,
The wealth, the happiness, the freedom of

The Nation! Who has hidden them, defaced them,
Sold them, corrupted them from the pure letter?
Why do they guard the rich man's cloak from a rent,
And tear the poor man's garment from his back?
Why are they, in the proud man's grasp, a sword,
And in the hand of the humble man, a reed?
The laws! The laws! I ask you for the laws!
Demand them in my country's sacred name!
Still silent? Reckless still of my appeal?
Romans! I ask the office of your Tribune!

14. GALGACUS TO THE CALEDONIANS. - Original Abridgment from Tacitus. REFLECTING on the origin of this war, and on the straits to which we are reduced, I am persuaded, O Caledonians, that to your strong hands and indomitable will is British liberty this day confided. There is no retreat for us, if vanquished. Not even the sea, covered as it is by the Roman fleet, offers a path for escape. And thus war and arms, ever welcomed by the brave, are now the only safety of the cowardly, if any such there be. No refuge is behind us; naught but the rocks, and the waves, and the deadlier Romans: men whose pride you have vainly tried to conciliate by forbearance; whose cruelty you have vainly sought to deprecate by moderation. The robbers of the globe, when the land fails, they scour the sea. Is the enemy rich, they are avaricious; is he poor,- they are ambitious. The East and the West are unable to satiate their desires. Wealth and poverty are alike coveted by their rapacity. To carry off, to massacre, to make seizures under false pretences, this they call empire; and when they make a desert, they call it peace!

Do not suppose, however, that the prowess of these Romans is equal to their lust. They have thrived on our divisions. They know how to turn the vices of others to their own profit. Casting off all hope of pardon, let us exhibit the courage of men to whom salvation and glory are equally dear. Nursed in freedom as we have been, unconquered and unconquerable, let us, in the first onset, show these usurpers what manner of men they are that Old Caledonia shelters in her bosom! All the incitements to victory are on our side. Wives, parents, children, these we have to protect; and these the Romans have not. They have none to cry shame upon their flight; none to shed tears of exultation at their success. Few in numbers, fearful from ignorance, gazing on unknown forests and untried seas, the Gods have delivered them, hemmed in, bound and helpless, into our hands. Let not their showy aspect, their glitter of silver and gold, dismay Such adornments can neither harm nor protect from harm. In

you.

Here is

the very line of the enemy we shall find friends. The Britons, the Gauls, the Germans, will recognize their own cause in ours. a leader; here an army! There are tributes, and levies, and badges of servitude, -impositions, which to assume, or to trample under foot forever, lies now in the power of your arms. Forth, then, Caledonians, to the field! Think of your ancestors! Think of your descendants!

15. ICILIUS ON VIRGINIA'S SEIZURE.-T. B. Macaulay.
fathers' graves,

by your

Now, by your children's cradles, — now,
Be men to-day, Quirités, or be forever slaves!

For this did Servius give us laws? For this did Lucrece bleed?
For this was the great vengeance wrought on Tarquin's evil seed?
For this did those false sons make red the axes of their sire?
For this did Scævola's right hand hiss in the Tuscan fire?
Shall the vile earth-fox awe the race that stormed the lion's den?
Shall we, who could not brook one lord, crouch to the wicked Ten?
O for that ancient spirit which curbed the Senate's will!

O for the tents which in old time whitened the Sacred Hill!
In those brave days our fathers stood firmly, side by side;
They faced the Marcian fury; they tamed the Fabian pride;
They drove the fiercest Quinctius an outcast forth from Rome;
They sent the haughtiest Claudius with shivered fasces home.
But what their care bequeathed us, our madness flung away:
All the ripe fruit of threescore years was blighted in a day.
Exult, ye proud Patricians! The hard-fought fight is o'er.
We strove for honors, -'t was in vain for freedom, 't is no more.
No crier to the polling summons the eager throng;

No Tribune breathes the word of might, that guards the weak from wrong.

Our very hearts, that were so high, sink down beneath your will. Riches, and lands, and power, and state-ye have them:-keep

them still.

Still keep the holy fillets; still keep the purple gown,

The axes and the curule chair, the car, and laurel crown:
Still press us for your cohorts, and, when the fight is done,

Still fill your garners from the soil which our good swords have won.
But, by the Shades beneath us, and by the Gods above,
Add not unto your cruel hate your yet more cruel love!
Have ye not graceful ladies, whose spotless lineage springs
From Consuls, and High Pontiffs, and ancient Alban kings?
Then leave the poor Plebeian his single tie to life-

The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife;
The gentle speech, the balm for all that his vexed soul endures,
The kiss, in which he half forgets even such a yoke as yours.
Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with pride;
Still let the bridegroom's arms enfold an unpolluted bride:

« AnteriorContinuar »