(OUP 1994, v.2. This excerpt, pp. 27 ff., is almost too long to qualify under Fair Use
if the commentary is not also counted; please contact me with any complaints.)

[from Book 3]

If you did not already have a clear understanding, fellow-citizens, of the difference between the rule of law handed down to you by your forefathers and this system of slavery imposed on you by Sulla, I would have been obliged to make a long speech and to inform you of how often the plebeians took up arms and seceded from the patricians, and of the reasons for their action. I would also have had to describe how they provided for themselves tribunes of the people as the defenders of all their rights.

But as matters stand, all I have to do is to urge you on, and to precede you on the road which, in my opinion, leads to the recovery of your liberty.

Nor do I overlook the vast resources of the nobility whose domination I am seeking to overthrow, single-handed and powerless, armed only with the empty shell of a magistracy; I also know how much more secure a faction of wicked men is than upright men acting on their own.

But apart from the expectation I hold of your support, which has dispelled my fear, I have decided that for a brave man defeat in a struggle for liberty is better than never to have struggled at all.

And yet all the others who were elected to defend your rights have been induced by favor, received or expected, or by bribery to turn all their power and authority against you; they consider it better to do wrong for payment than to do right without recompense.

And so they have now, every one of them, submitted to the mastery of a few men, who, under the pretext of carrying on a war, have taken over the treasury, the armies, the kingdoms, and the provinces. They have made for themselves a stronghold from the spoils they have taken from you. Meantime you, the multitude, submit yourselves like sheep to their individual service and enjoyment. You have been stripped of every privilege which your forefathers left you except your ballots, and by them, you who once chose your defenders now choose your masters.

And so everyone has gone over to them, but soon if you take back what is rightfully yours, most of them will return to you. The courage to defend what they hold dear is a quality possessed by few men; the rest are pawns of the stronger.

Are you still inclined to believe that those who were afraid of you even when you were weak and apathetic will in some way be able to impede you if you proceed with a united purpose? Unless, perchance, it was from a motive other than fear that Gaius Cotta, a consul from the inner circle of the ruling faction, restored some of their rights to the people's tribunes; and even though L. Sicinius, the first to raise the question of tribunician power, was circumvented while you only muttered about it, yet they feared your indignation even before you were disgusted by the wrong being done to you.

I cannot adequately express my astonishment at this attitude of your, fellow-citizens, for you realized that in the past your expectations had not been met. On the death of Sulla, who had imposed this infamous slavery on you, you believed that your troubles were over; but then emerged Catulus, far more savage.

In the consulship of Brutus and Mamercus an outbreak of violence intervened; then Gaius Curio played the despot to the extent of ruining a guiltless tribune.

Last year too saw the ferocity with which Lucullus attacked Lucius Quintius; look now at what a turmoil is being roused against me. but these sorts of attack were certainly to no purpose if it was their intention to put an end to their tyranny before you put an end to your slavery, especially since in this civil unrest, although other motives were alleged, the real object of the conflict on both sides was to decide who should be your masters.

Other disagreements have flared up from time to time inspired by unruliness, or hatred, or greed. Only one issue has remained constant; it has been sought by both sides and has been taken away from you for the future: the tribunician power, a weapon fashioned by our ancestors to defend freedom.

I remind you of this fact; I beg you to keep it in mind; do not change the names of things to suit your own cowardice and give to slavery the title of peace. There is no bargain that you will enjoy peace if wickedness triumphs over right and honor; there would have been had you remained entirely passive. Now they are on their guard, and if you do not gain the victory they will hold you in tighter bonds, since the greater the injustice inflicted the more protected it is from retribution.

"What, then, do you advise?" one of you will interpose. First of all you must give up this habit you have, you men active of tongue but weak of spirit, or not keeping the thought of liberty in mind outside the place of assembly.

Secondly--without attempting to urge you to those manly deeds by which your forefathers gained tribunes for the blebs, and then a patrician magistracy, and a right to vote independent of the sanction of the patricians--since all the power is in your hands, citizens, and you are certainly well able to carry out or not to carry out, in your own interests, the orders to which you are now submitting for the advantage of others, are you waiting for the advice of Jupiter or one of the other gods?

It is you yourselves, citizens, who ratify the pompous powers of the consuls and the decrees of the Senate by carrying them out; you hasten of your own accord to increase and strengthen the abuse of their power over you.

And yet I am not urging you to avenge your wrongs, but rather to seek a respite from strife; and it is not because I desire discord, as they charge [and charged Lepidus?], but because I wish to put an end to it, that I demand restitution according to the law of nations. If they stubbornly hang on to what they have acquired, I will not recommend war or secession, but simply that you should refuse any longer to shed your blood for them.

Let them hold and exercise their commands in their own way, let them seek triumphs, let them, with those ancestral portraits of theirs, harry Mithridates, Sertorius, and what is left of the exiles, but let those who have no share in the profits be free from the danger and the toil.

Unless, perchance, your services are being paid for by that hastily enacted law, which you regard so highly, for the distribution of corn; by this law they have valued the liberty of all of you at five measures per man, an allowance not much greater than prison rations. For just as in the case of prisoners that meager supply keeps death away, yet their strength wanes, so this small amount does not relieve you from domestic cares and deceives with the slenderest of hope the cowardice of each recipient.

But even if the allowance were a generous one, what a mark of apathy it would be, since it was offered as the price of your slavery, to be deceived and actually to owe gratitude to your oppressors for your own property! You must guard against trickery: for there is no other way by which they can prevail over the people as a whole, and in that way only will they attempt to do so.

It is for this reason that they are making plans to ingratiate themselves with you, and are putting you off until the coming of Gnaeus Pompeius, the very man whom, when they were in a state of fear, they bore on their necks, but presently, their fear dispelled, they tear to pieces.

Nor are these self-styled defenders of liberty, many as they are, ashamed to admit dependence on one man before they dare to right a wrong or are able to defend a right.

For my own part, I have had ample opportunity to get to know that Pompeius, a young man who has won such glory, prefers to be the leading man in the state with your consent than to share in their despotism, and that he will take the initiative in restoring the power of the tribunes.

There was a time, citizens of Rome, when each of you found protection in the collective strength of the community, not the community in one man; a time when no single mortal was able to give or take away such things.

And so, enough of words.

For it is not ignorance of what is going on that is your problem, but a kind of torpor which has laid hold on you; because of this you are stirred neither by glory nor by disgrace. You have given up everything in exchange for your present slothfulness, thinking that you have plenty of freedom because your backs are spared, and you are allowed to go here and there by the grace of your rich masters.

Yet these same privileges are now allowed to the country people; they are cut down in the quarrels of the powerful and are sent as gifts to magistrates in the provinces.

Thus we fight and conquer for the benefit of the few; whatever happens, the plebs are treated as the conquered. This will be more so as the days go by so long as they make greater efforts to retain their mastery than you do to regain your freedom.