Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

comes when the due vengeance from above shall overtake him, he will then dissemble as I do. Then he who now, hardened in wickedness, triumphs over those whom his violence has laid low, will, in his turn, feel distress, and suffer for his impious ingratitude to my father, and his blood thirsty cruelty to my brother.

Oh murdered, butchered brother! Oh, dearest to my heart-now gone forever from my sight! but why should I lament his death? He is, indeed, deprived of the blessed light of heaven, of life and kingdom, at once, by the very person, who ought to have been the first to hazard his own life in defence of any one of Micipsa's family! But as things are, my brother is not so much deprived of these comforts, as delivered from terror, from flight, from exile, and the endless train of miseries, which render life to me a burden. He lies full low, gored with wounds, and festering in his own blood. But he lies in peace. He feels none of the miseries which rend my soul with agony and distraction, while I am set up a spectacle to all mankind, of the uncertainty of human affairs. So far from having it in my power to revenge his death, I am not master of the means of securing my own life. So far from being in a condition to defend my kingdom from the violence of the usurper, I am obliged to apply for foreign protection for my own person.

Fathers! Senators of Roine !-The arbiters of the world! To you I fly for refuge from the murderous fury of Jugurtha. By your affection for your children, by your love for your country, by your own virtues, by the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, by all that is sacred, and all that is dear to you, deliver a wretched prince from undeserved, unprovoked injury; and save the kingdom of Numidia, which is your own property, from being the prey of violence, usurpation and cruelty.

IX.---Speech of Canuleius to the Consuls; in which he demands that the Plebeians may be admitted into the Consulship, and that the Laws prohibiting Puericians and Plebeians from intermarrying, may be repealed.

WHAT an insult upon us is this? If we are not so rich as the Patricians, are we not citizens of Rome as well as they? Inhabitants of the same country?---Members of the same community? The nations bordering upon Rome, and even strangers more remote, are admitted, not only to marriage with us, but to what is of much greater importance---the freedom of the city. Are we, because we are commoners, to be worse treated than strangers? And when we demand that the people may be free to bestow their offices and dignities on whom they please, Do we ask any thing unreasonable or new? Do we claim more than their original inherent right? What occasion then for all this uproar, as if the universe were falling to ruin? They were just going to lay violent hands upon me in the senate house.

What! Must this empire, then, be unavoidably overturned! Must Rome of necessity sink at once, if a Plebeian, worthy of the office, should be raised to the consulship? The Patricians, I am persuaded, if they could, would deprive you of the common light. It certainly offends them that you breathe, that you speak, that you have the shapes of men. Nay, but to make a commoner a consul, would be, say they, a most enormous thing.--Numa Pompilius, however, without being so much as a Roman citizen, was made king of Rome. The elder Tarquin, by birth not even an Italian, was nevertheless placed upon the throne. Sevius Tullius, the son of a captive woman, (nobody knows who his father was) obtained the kingdom, as the reward of his wisdom and virtue. In those days, no man in whom virtue shone conspicuous, was rejected or despised on account of his race and descent. And did the state prosper the less for that? Were not these strangers the very best of all our kings? And supposing, now, that a Plebeian should have their talents and merit, Would he be suffered to govern us?

But, "we find, that, upon the abolition of the regal power, no commoner was chosen to the consulate.". And, what of that? Before Numia's time, there were no pontiffs in Rome. Before Sevius Tullius's days, there was no census, no division of the people into classes and centuries. Who ever heard of consuls before the expulsion of Tarquin the proud? Dictators, we all know, are of modern invention; and so are the officers of tribunes, ædilles, quæstors. Within these ten years we have made decemvirs, and we have unmade them. Is nothing to be done but what has been done before? That very law, forbidding marriages of Patricians with Plebeians, Is not that a new thing? Was there my such law before the decemvirs enacted it? And a most shameful one it is in a free state. Such marriages, it seems, wiil taint the pure blood of the nobility! Why if they think so, let them take care to match their sisters and daughters with men of their own sort. No Plebeian will do violence to the daughter of a Patrician. Those are exploits for our prime nobles. There is no need to fear that we shall force any body into a contract of marriage. But, to make an express law to prohibit marriages of Patricians with Plebeians, What is this but to show the utmost contempt of us and to declare one part of the community to be impure and unclean?

They talk to us of the confusion there would be in families, if this statute should be repealed. I wonder they don't make a law against a commoner's living near a nobleman, going the same road that he is going, or being present at the same feast, or appearing in the same market place. They might as well pretend that these things make confusion in families, as that intermarriages will do it. Does not every one know that the children will be ranked according to the quality of their father, let him be a Patrician or a Plebeian? In short, it is manifest enough that we have nothing in view, but to be treated as men and citizens; nor can they who oppose our demand have any motive to it, but the love of domineering. I would fain know of you, consuls and Patricians, Is the sovereign power in the people of Rome, or in you? I hope you will allow, that the people can, at

"

their pleasure, either make a law or repeal one. And will you, then, as soon as any law is proposed to them, pretend to list them immediately for the war, and hinder them from giving their suffrages, by leading them into the field?

Hear me consuls. Whether the news of the war you talk of be true, or whether it be only a false rumor, spread abroad for nothing but a color to send the people out of the city: I declare, as a tribune, that this people, who have already so often spilt their blood in our country's cause, are again ready to arm for its defence and its glory, if they may be restored to their natural rights, and you will no longer treat us like strangers in our own country; but if you account us unworthy of your alliance, by intermarriages; if you will not suffer the entrance to the chief officers in the state to be open to all persons of merit, indifferently, but will confine your choice of magistrates to the Senate alone-talk of wars as much as ever you please-paint in your ordinary discourses, the league and power of our enemies, ten times more dreadful than you do now-I declare, that this people, whom you do so much despise, and to whom, you are nevertheless indebted for your victories, shall never more enlist themselves-not a man of them shall take arms-not a man of them shall expose his life for imperious lords, with whom he can neither share the dignities of the state, nor in private life, have any alliance by marriage.

X-Speech of Junius Brutus, over the dead Body of Lucretia.

YES, noble lady, I swear by this blood, which was once so pure, and which nothing but royal villany could have polluted, that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinius the proud, his wicked wife and their children, with fire and sword; nor will I ever suffer any of that family, or of any other whatsoever, to be king in Rome: Ye gods, I call you to witness this my oath !-There Romans, turn your eyes to that sad spectacle-the daughter of Lucretia, Collatinus' wife-she died by her own hand. See there a noble lady, whom the lust of a Tarquin reduced

to the necessity of being her own executioner, to attest her innocence. Hospitably entertained by her, as a kinsman of her husband's,, Sextus, the perfidious guest, became her brutal ravisher. The chaste, the generous Lucretia, could not survive the insult. Glorious woman! But once only treated as a slave, she thought life no longer be be endured. Lucretia, as a woman, disdained a life that depended on a tyrant's will; and shall we— shall men, with such an example before our eyes, and after five and twenty years of ignominious servitude, shall we, through a fear of dying, defer one single instant to assert our liberty? No, Romans, now is the time;-the favorable moment we have so long waited for, is come. Tarquin is not at Rome. The Patricians are at the head of the enterprize. The city is abundantly provided with men, arms, and all things necessary.There is nothing wanting to secure the success, if our own courage does not fail us. And shall those warriors who have ever been so brave when foreign enemies were to be subdued, or when conquest were to be made to gratify the ambition and avarice of a Tarquin, be then only cowards, when they are to deliver themselves from slavery? Some of you are perhaps intimidated by the army which Tarquin now commands. The soldiers, you imagine, will take the part of their general. Banish so groundless a fear. The love of liberty is natural to all men. Your fellow citizens in the camp feel the weight of oppression, with as quick a sense as you that are in Rome; they will as eagerly seize the occasion of throwing off the yoke. But let us grant that there are some among them, who, through baseness of spirit, or a bad education, will be disposed to favor the tyrant. The number of these can be but small, and we have means sufficient in our hands to reduce them to reason." They have left us hostages more dear to them than life.Their wives, their children, their fathers, their mothers are here in the city. Courage, Romans, the gods are for us;-those gods, whose temples and altars the impious Tarquin has profaned, by sacrifices and libations, made with polluted hands, polluted with blood, and with numberless unexpiated crimes committed against his subjects.

« AnteriorContinuar »