If you can but summon up your former courage; if you will now march out of Rome with your consuls, there is no punishment you can inflict, which I will not submit to, if I do not in a few days drive these pillagers out of our territory. This terror of war (with which you seem so grievously struck) shall quickly be removed from Rome to their own cities.
CAIUS MARIUS to the ROMANS.
It is but too common, my countrymen, to observe a material difference between the behaviour of those who stand candidates, for places of power and trust, before and after their obtaining them. They solicit them in one manner, and execute them in another. They set out with a great appearance of activity, humility, and moderation; and they quickly fall into sloth, pride, and avarice.—It is undoubtedly, no easy matter to discharge, to the general satisfaction, the duty of a supreme commander in troublesome times. I am, I hope, duly sensible of the importance of the office I propose to take upon me, for the service of my country. To carry on, with effect, an expensive war, and yet be frugal of the public money; to oblige those to serve, whom it may be delicate to offend; to conduct, at the same time, a complicated variety of operations; to concert measures at home, answerable to the state of things abroad; and to gain every valuable end, in spite of opposition from the envious, the factious, and the disaffected; to do all this, my countrymen, is more difficult than is generally thought.
But, besides the disadvantages which are common to me, with all others in eminent stations, my case is, in this respect, peculiarly hard; that whereas a commander of Patrician rank, if he is guilty of a neglect, or breach of duty, has his great connection, the antiquity of his family, the important services of his ancestors, and the multitudes he has, by power, engaged in his interest, to screen him from condign punishment; my whole safety depends upon myself; which renders it the more indispensibly necessary for me, to take care that my conduct be clear and unexceptionable. Besides, I am well aware, my country men, that the eye of the public is upon me; and that, though the impartial, who prefer the real advantage of the commonwealth to all other considerations, favour my pretensions, the Patricians want nothing so much as an occasion against me. It is, therefore, my fixed resolution, to use my best endeavours, that you may not be disappointed in me, and that their indirect designs against me may be defeated.
I have, from my youth, been familiar with toils, and with dangers. I was faithful to your interests, my countrymen, when I served you for no reward, but that of honour. It is not my design to betray you, now that you have conferred upon me a place of profit. You have committed to my conduct, the war against Jugurtha. The Patricians are offended at this. But, where would be the wisdom of giving such a command to one of their honourable body? a person of illustrious birth, of ancient family, of innumerable statues, but—of no experience! What service would his long line of dead ancestors, or his multitude of motionless statues, do his country in the day of battle? What could such a general do, but, in his trepidation and inexperience, have recourse to some inferior commander, for direction in difficulties to which he was not himself equal? Thus, your Patrician general would, in fact have a general over him; so that the acting commander would still be a Plebeian. So true is this, my countrymen, that I have myself known those, who have been chosen consuls, begin then to read the history of their own country, of which, till that time, they were totally ignorant: that is, they first obtained the employment, and then bethought themselves of the qualifications necessary for the proper discharge of it.
I submit to your judgment, Romans, on which side the advantage lies, when a comparison is made between Patrician haughtiness and Plebeian experience. The very actions, which they have only read, I have partly seen, and partly myself achieved. What they know by reading, I know by action. They are pleased to slight my mean birth. I despise their mean characters. Want of birth and fortune is the objection against me: want of personal merit against them. But are not all men of the same species? What can make a difference between one man and another but the endowments of the mind? For my part, I shall always look upon the bravest man as the noblest man. Suppose it were enquired of the fathers of such Patricians as Albinus and Bessia, whether, if they had their choice, they would desire sons of their character, or of mine: what would they answer, but that they should wish the worthiest to be their sons. If the Patricians have reason to despise me, let them likewise despise their ancestors, whose nobility was the fruit of their virtue. Do they envy the honours bestowed upon me? let them envy, likewise, my labours, my abstinence, and the dangers I have undergone for my country, by which I have acquired them. But those worthless men lend such a life of inactivity, as if they despised any honours you can bestow; whilst they aspire to honours, as if they had deserved them by the most industrious virtue. They lay claim to the rewards of activity, for their having enjoyed the pleasures of luxury. Yet none can be more lavish than they are in praise of their ancestors: and they imagine they honour themselves by celebrating their forefathers. Whereas, they do the very contrary: for, as much as their ancestors were distinguished for their virtues, so much are they disgraced by their vices.
Observe now, my countrymen, the injustice of the Patricians. They arrogate to themselves honours, on account of the exploits done by their forefathers; whilst they will not allow me the due praise, for performing the very same sort of actions in my own person. He has no statues, they cry, of his family. He can trace no venerable line of ancestors. What then! Is it matter of more praise to disgrace one's illustrious ancestors, than to become illustrious by one's own good behaviour? What if I can shew no statues of my family: I can shew the standards, the armour, and the trappings, which I have taken myself from the vanquished: I can shew the scars of those wounds which I have received by facing the enemies of my country. These are my statues; these are the honours I boast of. Not left me by inheritance as theirs; but earned by toil, by abstinence, by valour; amidst clouds of dust, and seas of blood: scenes of action, where those effeminate Patricians, who endeavour, by indirect means, to depreciate me in your esteem, have never dared to shew their faces.