that they have put their trust in:  having been so often routed and put to flight, stripped of their camp, mulcted in their land, sent under the yoke, they know both themselves and you.  It is the discord among the several orders that is the curse of this city, the contests between the patricians and commons.  While we have neither bounds in the pursuit of power, nor you in that of liberty, while you are wearied of patrician, we of plebeian magistrates, they have taken courage.  In the name of Heaven, what would you have?  You desired tribunes of the commons; we granted them for the sake of concord.  You longed for decemvirs; we suffered them to be created.  You became weary of decemvirs; we compelled them to resign office.  Your resentment against these same persons when they became private citizens still continuing, we suffered men of the highest family and rank to die or go into exile.  You wished asecond time to create tribunes of the commons; you created them.  You wished to elect consuls attached to your party; and, although we saw that it was unjust to the patricians, we have even resigned ourselves to see a patrician magistracy conceded as an offering to the people.  The aid of tribunes, right of appeal to the people, the acts of the commons made binding on the patricians under the pretext of equalizing the laws, the subversion of our privileges, we have endured and still endure.  What end is there to be to our dissensions?  When shall it be allowed us to have a united city, one common country?  We, when defeated, submit with greater resignation than you when victorious.  Is it enough for you, that you are objects of terror to us?  The Aventine is taken against us:  against us the Sacred Mount is seized.  When the Esquiline was almost taken by the enemy, no one defended it, and when the Volscian foe was scaling the rampart, no one drove him off:  it is against us you behave like men, against us you are armed.

“Come, when you have blockaded the senate-house here, and have made the forum the seat of war, and filled the prison with the leading men of the state, march forth through the Esquiline gate, with that same determined spirit; or, if you do not even venture thus far, behold from your walls your lands laid waste with fire and sword, booty driven off, houses set on fire in every direction and smoking.  But, I may be told, it is only the public weal that is in a worse condition through this:  the land is burned, the city is besieged, the glory of the war rests with the enemy.  What in the name of Heaven—­what is the state of your own private affairs?  Even now to each of you his own private losses from the country will be announced.  What, pray, is there at home, whence you can recruit them?  Will the tribunes restore and re-establish what you have lost?  Of sound and words they will heap on you as much as you please, and of charges against the leading men, laws one after another, and public meetings.  But from these meetings never has one of you returned