Livy - THE HISTORY OF ROME (Complete Edition in 4 Volumes)

Just when these matters were going on in the senate, Canuleius thus declaimed in favour of his laws and against the consuls: "Frequently even before now I think I have observed how much the patricians despised you, Romans, how unworthy they deemed you to dwell in the one city and within the same walls with them; but on the present occasion most clearly, in their having risen up so determinedly in opposition to those propositions of ours: in which what else do we do, but remind them that we are their fellow citizens, and that though we possess not the same power, we inhabit the same city? In the one we demand intermarriage, a thing which is usually granted to neighbours and foreigners: we have granted even to vanquished enemies the right of citizenship, which is more than the right of intermarriage. In the other we propose nothing new; we only reclaim and demand that which is the people's; that the Roman people may confer honours on whomsoever they may please. And what in the name of goodness is it for which they embroil heaven and earth? why was almost an attack made on me just now in the senate? why do they say that they will not restrain themselves from violence, and threaten that they will insult an office, sacred and inviolable? Shall this city no longer be able to stand, and is the empire at stake, if the right of free suffrage is granted to the Roman people, to confer the consulship on whomsoever they may please, and if a plebeian, though he may be worthy of the highest honour, is not precluded from the hope of attaining that honour? and is this of the same import, whether a plebeian be made a consul, as if any one were to propose a slave or the son of a slave to be consul? Do you perceive in what contempt you live? they would take from you a participation in this light, if it were permitted them. That you breathe, that you enjoy the faculty of speech, that you possess the forms of human beings, excites their indignation. Nay even, as I hope for mercy, they say that it is contrary to religion that a plebeian should be made consul. I pray, though we are not admitted to the annals, nor to the commentaries of the pontiffs, do we not know even those things which strangers know? that consuls have succeeded kings? and that they possess no privilege, no majesty which was not formerly inherent in kings? Do you suppose that we ever heard it mentioned that Numa Pompilius, who not only was not a patrician, but not even a citizen of Rome, was sent for from the country of the Sabines by order of the people, with the approbation of the senate, and that he was made king at Rome? that afterwards Lucius Tarquinius, who was not only not of Roman, but not even of Italian extraction, the son of Damaratus of Corinth, an emigrant from Tarquinii, was made king, even whilst the sons of Ancus still lived? that after him Servius Tullius, the son of a captive woman of Corniculum, with his father unknown, his mother a slave, attained the throne by his ability and merit? For what shall I say of Titus Tatius the Sabine, whom Romulus himself, the founder of our city, admitted into partnership of the throne? Accordingly, whilst no class of persons is disdained, in whom conspicuous merit may be found, the Roman dominion increased. You do well to be dissatisfied now with a plebeian consul, when your ancestors disdained not foreigners as kings, and when, even after the expulsion of kings, the city was not shut against foreign merit. After the expulsion of the kings, we certainly admitted the Claudian family from the Sabine country not only into citizenship, but even into the number of the patricians. Can a man from a foreigner be made a patrician, then a consul? shall a Roman citizen, if he belong to the commons, be precluded from all hope of the consulate? Do we then deem it impossible that a man of the commons can be a person of fortitude and activity, qualified to excel both in peace and war, tyke to Numa, Lucius Tarquinius, and Servius Tullius? Or, should such appear, shall we not suffer him to meddle with the helm of government? or shall we have consuls like the decemvirs, the most abandoned of mortals, who were, however, all patricians, rather than like the best of kings, though new men?

"But (I may be told) no commoner has been consul since the expulsion of the kings. What then? ought no innovation to be introduced? and what has not yet been practised, (and in a new state there are many things not yet practised,) ought not even such measures, even though they be useful, be adopted? During the reign of Romulus there were no pontiffs, nor augurs: they were appointed by Numa Pompilius. There was no census in the state, nor the distribution of centuries and classes; it was introduced by Servius Tullius: there never had been consuls; they were created after the expulsion of the kings. Of a dictator neither the office nor the name had existed; it commenced its existence among the senators. There were no tribunes of the people, ædiles, nor quæstors: it was resolved that those officers should be appointed. Within the last ten years we both created decemvirs for compiling laws, and we abolished them. Who can doubt but that in a city doomed for eternal duration, increasing to an immense magnitude, new civil offices, priesthoods, rights of families and of individuals, may be established? This very matter, that there should not be the right of intermarriage between patricians and commons, did not the decemvirs introduce within the last few years to the utmost injury of the commons, on a principle most detrimental to the public? Can there be a greater or more marked insult, than that one portion of the state, as if contaminated, should be deemed unworthy of intermarriage? What else is it than to suffer exile within the same walls, actual rustication? They wish to prevent our being mixed with them by affinity or consanguinity; that our blood be not mingled with theirs. What? if this cast a stain on that nobility of yours, which most of you, the progeny of Albans or Sabines, possess, not in right of birth or blood, but by co-optation into the patricians, having been elected either by the kings, or after the expulsion of kings, by order of the people, could ye not keep it pure by private regulations, by neither marrying into the commons, and by not suffering your daughters or sisters to marry out of the patricians. No one of the commons would offer violence to a patrician maiden; such lust as that belongs to the patricians. None of them would oblige any man against his will to enter into a marriage contract. But really that such a thing should be prevented by law, that the intermarriage of the patricians and plebeians should be interdicted, that it is which is insulting to the commons. Why do you not combine in enacting a law that there shall be no intermarriage between rich and poor? That which has in all places and always been the business of private regulations, that a woman might marry into whatever family she has been engaged to, and that each man might take a wife out of whatever family he had contracted with, that ye shackle with the restraints of a most tyrannical law, by which ye sever the bonds of civil society and split one state into two. Why do ye not enact a law that a plebeian shall not dwell in the neighbourhood of a patrician? that he shall not go the same road with him? that he shall not enter the same banquet with him? that he shall not stand in the same forum? For what else is there in the matter, if a patrician man wed a plebeian woman, or a plebeian a patrician? What right, pray, is thereby changed? the children surely go with the father. Nor is there any thing which we seek from intermarriage with you, except that we may be held in the number of human beings and fellow citizens; nor is there any reason why ye contest the point, except that it delights you to strive for insult and ignominy to us.