12. CAIUS MARIUS TO THE ROMANS, ON THE OBJECTIONS TO MAKING HIM GENERAL.Original Paraphrase from Sallust.

You have committed to my conduct, O Romans, the war against Jugurtha. The Patricians are offended at this. "He has no family statues," they exclaim. "He can point to no illustrious line of ancestors!" What then? Will dead ancestors, will motionless statues, help fight your battles? Will it avail your General to appeal to these, in the perilous hour? Rare wisdom would it be, my countrymen, to intrust the command of your army to one whose only qualification for it would be the virtue of his forefathers! to one untried and unexperienced, but of most unexceptionable family! who could not show a solitary scar, but any number of ancestral statues! who knew not the first rudiments of war, but was very perfect in pedigrees! Truly I have known of such holiday heroes,-raised, because of family considerations, to a command for which they were not fitted,-who, when the moment for action arrived, were obliged, in their ignorance and trepidation, to give to some inferior officer -to some despised Plebeian- the ordering of every movement.

I submit it to you, Romans,-is Patrician pride or Plebeian experience the safer reliance? The actions of which my opponents have merely read, I have achieved or shared in. What they have seen written in books, I have seen written on battle-fields with steel and blood. They object to my humble birth. They sneer at my lowly origin. Impotent objection! Ignominious sneer! Where but in the spirit of a man (bear witness, Gods!), where but in the spirit, can his nobility be lodged? and where his dishonor, but in his own cowardly inaction, or his unworthy deeds? Tell these railers at my obscure extraction, their haughty lineage could not make them noble- my humble birth could

never make me base.

I profess no indifference to noble descent. It is a good thing to number great men among one's ancestry. But when a descendant is dwarfed in the comparison, it should be accounted a shame rather than a boast. These Patricians cannot despise me, if they would, since their titles of nobility date from ancestral services similar to those which I myself have rendered. And what if I can show no family statues? I can show the standards, the armor, and the spoils, which I myself have wrested from the vanquished. I can show the scars of many wounds received in combating the enemies of Rome. These are my statues! These the honors I can boast of! Not an accidental inheritance, like theirs; but earned by toil, by abstinence, by valor; amid clouds of dust and seas of blood; scenes of action, in which these effeminate Patricians, who would now depreciate me in your esteem, have never dared to appear, no, not even as spectators! Here, Romans, are my credentials; here, my titles of nobility; here, my claims to the generalship of your army! Tell me, are they not as respectable, are they not as valid, are they not as deserving of your confidence and reward, as those which any Patrician of them all can offer?

13. CAIUS GRACCHUS, CITED BEFORE THE CENSORS, APPEALS TO THE PEOPLE. -Original Adaptation from J. S. Knowles.

It appears

--

I am cited here because I have returned
Without my General's leave, and for the crime
Of having raised the tumult at Fregella.
First, with the first. I have remained my time;
Nay, I have over-served it by the laws,
The laws which Caius Gracchus dares not break.
But, Censors, let that pass.
I will propose
A better question for your satisfaction:
"How have I served my time?" I'll answer that :
"How have I served my time? For mine own gain,
Or that of the Republic?" What was my office?
Quæstor. What was its nature? Lucrative, -
So lucrative, that all my predecessors

Who went forth poor returned home very rich.
I went forth poor enough,

But have returned still poorer than I went.

Ye citizens of Rome, behold what favor

Your masters show your brethren! I have borne

My country's arms with honor; over-served

My time; returned in poverty, that might

-

Have amassed treasures, and they thus reward me:
Prefer a charge against me without proof,

Direct or indirect; without a testimony,
Weighty or light; without an argument,
Idle or plausible; without as much
Of feasibility as would suffice

To feed suspicion's phantom! Why is this?
How have I bought this hatred? When my brother,
Tiberius Gracchus, fell beneath their blows,

I called them not assassins! When his friends
Fell sacrifices to their after-vengeance,

I did not style them butchers!-did not name them
The proud, perfidious, insolent Patricians !

Ye men of Rome, there is no favor, now,
For justice! Grudgingly her dues are granted!
Your great men boast no more the love of country.
They count their talents; measure their domains;
Enlarge their palaces; dress forth their banquets;
Awake their lyres and timbrels; and with their floods
Of ripe Falernian drown the little left

Of virtue!-Romans, I would be your Tribune.
Fear not, Censors! I would raise no tumult;
This hand 's the first to arm against the man,
Whoe'er he be, that favors civil discord :

I have no gust for blood, nor for oppression!

I sacrifice to Justice and to Mercy!

The laws! the laws! Of common right the guard, -
The wealth, the happiness, the freedom of

The Nation! Who has hidden them, defaced them,
Sold them, corrupted them from the pure letter?
Why do they guard the rich man's cloak from a rent,
And tear the poor man's garment from his back?
Why are they, in the proud man's grasp, a sword,
And in the hand of the humble man, a reed?
The laws! The laws! I ask you for the laws!
Demand them in my country's sacred name!
Still silent? Reckless still of my appeal?
Romans! I ask the office of your Tribune!

14. GALGACUS TO THE CALEDONIANS. — Original Abridgment from Tacitus. REFLECTING on the origin of this war, and on the straits to which we are reduced, I am persuaded, O Caledonians, that to your strong hands and indomitable will is British liberty this day confided. There is no retreat for us, if vanquished. Not even the sea, covered as it is by the Roman fleet, offers a path for escape. And thus war and arms, ever welcomed by the brave, are now the only safety of the cowardly, if any such there be. No refuge is behind us; naught but the rocks, and the waves, and the deadlier Romans: men whose pride you have vainly tried to conciliate by forbearance; whose cruelty you have vainly sought to deprecate by moderation. The robbers of the globe, when the land fails, they scour the sea. Is the enemy rich, they are avaricious; is he poor, they are ambitious. The East and the West are unable to satiate their desires. Wealth and poverty are alike coveted by their rapacity. To carry off, to massacre, to make seizures under false pretences, this they call empire; and when they make a desert, they call it peace!

Do not suppose, however, that the prowess of these Romans is equal to their lust. They have thrived on our divisions. They know how to turn the vices of others to their own profit. Casting off all hope of pardon, let us exhibit the courage of men to whom salvation and glory are equally dear. Nursed in freedom as we have been, unconquered and unconquerable, let us, in the first onset, show these usurpers what manner of men they are that Old Caledonia shelters in her bosom ! All the incitements to victory are on our side. Wives, parents, children, these we have to protect; and these the Romans have not. They have none to cry shame upon their flight; none to shed tears of exultation at their success. Few in numbers, fearful from ignorance, gazing on unknown forests and untried seas, the Gods have delivered them, hemmed in, bound and helpless, into our hands. Let not their showy aspect, their glitter of silver and gold, dismay you. Such adornments can neither harm nor protect from harm. In

the very line of the enemy we shall find friends. The Britons, the Gauls, the Germans, will recognize their own cause in ours. Here is a leader; here an army! There are tributes, and levies, and badges of servitude, -impositions, which to assume, or to trample under foot forever, lies now in the power of your arms. Forth, then, Caledonians, to the field! Think of your ancestors! Think of your descendants!

15. ICILIUS ON VIRGINIA'S SEIZURE.-T. B. Macaulay.

by your

fathers' graves,

Now, by your children's cradles,—now,
Be men to-day, Quirités, or be forever slaves!
For this did Servius give us laws? For this did Lucrece bleed?
For this was the great vengeance wrought on Tarquin's evil seed?
For this did those false sons make red the axes of their sire?
For this did Scævola's right hand hiss in the Tuscan fire?
Shall the vile earth-fox awe the race that stormed the lion's den?
Shall we, who could not brook one lord, crouch to the wicked Ten?
O for that ancient spirit which curbed the Senate's will!

O for the tents which in old time whitened the Sacred Hill!
In those brave days our fathers stood firmly, side by side;
They faced the Marcian fury; they tamed the Fabian pride;
They drove the fiercest Quinctius an outcast forth from Rome;
They sent the haughtiest Claudius with shivered fasces home.
But what their care bequeathed us, our madness flung away:
All the ripe fruit of threescore years was blighted in a day.
Exult, ye proud Patricians! The hard-fought fight is o'er.
We strove for honors, —'t was in vain: for freedom, — 't is no more.
No crier to the polling summons the eager throng;

No Tribune breathes the word of might, that guards the weak from

wrong.

your

will.

Our very hearts, that were so high, sink down beneath
Riches, and lands, and power, and state-ye have them:-keep

them still.

Still keep the holy fillets; still keep the purple gown,
The axes and the curule chair, the car, and laurel crown:

Still press us for your cohorts, and, when the fight is done,

Still fill your garners from the soil which our good swords have won.
But, by the Shades beneath us, and by the Gods above,
Add not unto your cruel hate your yet more cruel love!
Have ye not graceful ladies, whose spotless lineage springs
From Consuls, and High Pontiffs, and ancient Alban kings?
Then leave the poor Plebeian his single tie to life-
The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife;
The gentle speech, the balm for all that his vexed soul endures,
The kiss, in which he half forgets even such a yoke as yours.
Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with pride;
Still let the bridegroom's arms enfold an unpolluted bride:

Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame,

That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to flame, Lest, when our latest hope is fled, ye taste of our despair,

And learn, by proof, in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare.

16. THE SPARTANS' MARCH.-Felicia Hemans. Born, 1794; died, 1835. The Spartans used not the trumpet in their march into battle, says Thucydides, because they wished not to excite the rage of their warriors. Their charging-step was made to the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders.

"T WAS morn upon the Grecian hills, where peasants dressed the vines;
Sunlight was on Citharon's rills, Arcadia's rocks and pines.
And brightly, through his reeds and flowers, Eurotas wandered by,
When a sound arose from Sparta's towers of solemn harmony.
Was it the hunter's choral strain, to the woodland-goddess poured?
Did virgin hands, in Pallas' fane, strike the full-sounding chord?
But helms were glancing on the stream, spears ranged in close array,
And shields flung back a glorious beam to the morn of a fearful day!
And the mountain echoes of the land swelled through the deep-blue sky,
While to soft strains moved forth a band of men that moved to die.
They marched not with the trumpet's blast, nor bade the horn peal out;
And the laurel-groves, as on they passed, rung with no battle shout!
They asked no clarion's voice to fire their souls with an impulse high;
But the Dorian reed, and the Spartan lyre, for the sons of liberty!
And still sweet flutes, their path around, sent forth Æolian breath:
They needed not a sterner sound to marshal them for death!
So moved they calmly to their field, thence never to return,
Save bringing back the Spartan shield, or on it proudly borne!

17. THE GREEKS' RETURN FROM BATTLE. - Ibid.

Io! they come, they come! garlands for every shrine!
Strike lyres to greet them home! bring roses, pour ye wine!
Swell, swell the Dorian flute, through the blue, triumphant sky!
Let the Cittern's tone salute the sons of victory.

With the offering of bright blood, they have ransomed hearth and tomb,
Vineyard, and field, and flood; Io! they come, they come!

Sing it where olives wave, and by the glittering sea,

And o'er each hero's grave, sing, sing, the land is free!
Mark ye the flashing oars, and the spears that light the deep!
How the festal sunshine pours, where the lords of battle sweep!
Each hath brought back his shield; maid, greet thy lover home!
Mother, from that proud field,-Io! thy son is come!

Who murmured of the dead? Hush, boding voice! We know
That many a shining head lies in its glory low.

Breathe not those names to-day! They shall have their praise ere long,
And a power all hearts to sway, in ever-burning song.