The enemy is at our gates, the AEsquiline is near being taken, and nobody stirs to hinder it.  But against us you are valiant, against us you can arm with diligence.  Come on, then, besiege the senate house, make a camp of the forum, fill the jails with our nobles, and when you have achieved these glorious exploits, then at last sally out at the AEsquiline gate, with the same fierce spirits against the enemy.  Does your resolution fail you for this?  Go, then, and behold from your walls, your lands ravaged, your houses plundered and in flames, the whole country laid waste with fire and sword.  Have you any thing here to repair these damages?  Will the tribunes make up your losses to you?  They’ll give you as many words as you please:  Bring impeachments in abundance against the prime men of the state:  Heap laws upon laws; assemblies you shall have without end.  But will any of you return the richer from these assemblies?  Extinguish, O Romans, those fatal divisions; generously break this cursed enchantment, which keeps you buried in a scandalous inaction.  Open your eyes, and consider the management of these ambitious men, who, to make themselves powerful in their party, study nothing but how they may foment divisions in the commonwealth.

If you can but summon up your former courage; if you will now march out of Rome with your consuls, there is no punishment you can inflict, which I will not submit to, if I do not in a few days drive these pillagers out of our territory.  This terror of war (with which you seem so grievously struck) shall quickly be removed from Rome to their own cities.

CAIUS MARIUS to the ROMANS.

It is but too common, my countrymen, to observe a material difference between the behaviour of those who stand candidates, for places of power and trust, before and after their obtaining them.  They solicit them in one manner, and execute them in another.  They set out with a great appearance of activity, humility, and moderation; and they quickly fall into sloth, pride, and avarice.—­It is undoubtedly, no easy matter to discharge, to the general satisfaction, the duty of a supreme commander in troublesome times.  I am, I hope, duly sensible of the importance of the office I propose to take upon me, for the service of my country.  To carry on, with effect, an expensive war, and yet be frugal of the public money; to oblige those to serve, whom it may be delicate to offend; to conduct, at the same time, a complicated variety of operations; to concert measures at home, answerable to the state of things abroad; and to gain every valuable end, in spite of opposition from the envious, the factious, and the disaffected; to do all this, my countrymen, is more difficult than is generally thought.