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31“Were not devotion to our country paramount, I should be deterred, fellow citizens, from addressing you by many considerations: the power of the dominant faction, your spirit of submission, the absence of justice, and especially because more danger than honour awaits integrity. 2Some things, indeed, I am ashamed to speak of: how during the past fifteen years you have been the sport of a few men’s insolence; how shamefully your defenders have perished unavenged; 3how your own spirits have been so demoralized because of weakness and cowardice that you do not rise even now, when your enemies are in your power, but still fear those in whom you ought to inspire fear. 4But although conditions are such, yet my spirit prompts me to brave the power of this faction. 5At least, I shall make use of the freedom of speech which is my inheritance from my father; but whether I shall do so in vain or to good purpose lies in your hands, my countrymen. 6I do not urge you to take up arms against your oppressors, as your fathers often did; there is no need of violence, none of secession. They must go to ruin their own way. 7After the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, whom they accused of trying to make himself king, prosecutions were instituted against the Roman commons. Again, after Gaius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius were slain, many men of your order suffered death in the dungeon.In both cases bloodshed was ended, not by law, but by the caprice of the victors.
8“But let us admit that to restore their rights to the commons was the same thing as to aspire to royal power, and that whatever cannot be avenged without shedding the blood of citizens was justly done. 9In former years you were silently indignant that the treasury was pillaged, that kings and free peoples paid tribute to a few nobles, that those nobles possessed supreme glory and vast wealth. Yet they were not satisfied with having committed with impunity these great crimes, and so at last the laws, your sovereignty, and all things human and divine have been delivered to your enemies. 10And they who have done these things are neither ashamed nor sorry, but they walk in grandeur before your eyes, some flaunting their priesthoods and consulships, others their triumphs, just as if these were honours and not stolen goods.
11“Slaves bought with a price do not put up with unjust treatment from their masters; will you, Roman citizens born to power, endure slavery with patience? 12But who are they who have seized upon our country? Men stained with crime, with gory hands, of monstrous greed, guilty, yet at the same time full of pride, who have made honour, reputation, loyalty, in short everything honourable and dishonourable, a source of gain. 13Some of them are safeguarded by having slain tribunes of the commons, others by unjust prosecutions, many by having shed your blood. 14Thus the more atrocious the conduct, the greater the safety. They have shifted fear from their crimes to your cowardice, united as they are by the same desires, the same hatred, the same fears. 15This among good men constitutes friendship; among the wicked it is faction. 16But if your love of freedom were as great as the thirst for tyranny which spurs them on, surely our country would not be torn asunder as it now is, and your favours would be bestowed on the most virtuous, not on the most reckless. 17Your forefathers, to assert their legal rights and establish their sovereignty, twice seceded and took armed possession of the Aventine; will you not exert yourselves to the utmost in order to retain the liberty which they bequeathed to you? And will you not show the greater ardour, because it is more shameful to lose what has been won than never to have won it?
18“I seem to hear someone say, ‘What then do you advise?’ I reply, ‘Let those who have betrayed their country to the enemy be punished, not by arms or violence, which it is less becoming for you to inflict than for them to suffer, but by the courts and Jugurtha’s own testimony. 19If he is a prisoner of war, he will surely be obedient to your commands; but if he scorns them, you may well ask yourselves what kind of peace or surrender that is from which Jugurtha has gained impunity for his crimes and a few powerful men immense wealth, while our country suffers damage and disgrace. 20Unless haply you are not even yet sated with their domination, unless these times please you less than the days when kingdoms, provinces, statutes, laws, courts, war and peace, in short all things human and divine, were in the hands of a few; and when you, that is to say the Roman people, unconquered by your enemies, rulers of all nations, were content to retain the mere breath of life. For which of you dared to refuse slavery?
21“For my own part, although I consider it most shameful for a true man to suffer wrong without taking vengeance, yet I could willingly allow you to pardon those most criminal of men, since they are your fellow citizens, were it not that mercy would end in destruction. 22For such is their insolence that they are not satisfied to have done evil with impunity, unless the opportunity for further wrong-doing be wrung from you; and you will be left in eternal anxiety, because of the consciousness that you must either submit to slavery or use force to maintain your freedom.
23“Pray, what hope have you of mutual confidence or harmony? They wish to be tyrants, you to be free; they desire to inflict injury, you to prevent it; finally, they treat our allies as enemies and our enemies as allies. 24Are peace and friendship compatible with sentiments so unlike? 25They are not, and therefore I warn and implore you not to let such wickedness go unscathed. It is not a matter of plundering the treasury or of extorting money from our allies—serious crimes, it is true, but so common now-a days as to be disregarded. Nay, the senate’s dignity has been prostituted to a ruthless enemy, your sovereignty has been betrayed, your country has been offered for sale at home and abroad. 26Unless cognizance is taken of these outrages, unless the guilty are punished, what will remain except to pass our lives in submission to those who are guilty of these acts? For to do with impunity whatever one fancies is to be a king. 27I am not urging you, Romans, to rejoice rather in the guilt than in the innocence of your fellow citizens; but you should not insist upon ruining the good by pardoning the wicked. 28Moreover, in a republic it is far better to forget a kindness than an injury. The good man merely becomes less active in well doing when you neglect him, but the bad man grows more wicked. 29Finally, if there should be no wrongs, you would not often need help.”
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