thing? Was there any such law before the decemvris en acted it? And a most shameful one it is, in a free state.

9. Such marriages, it seems will taint the pure blood of the nobility! Why, if they think so, let them take care to match their fifters and daughters with men of their own fort. No Plebian will do violence to the daughter of a Patrician. Those are exploits for our prime nobles.

10. There is no need to fear that we shall force any body into a contract of marriage. But to make an express law to prohibit marriages of Patricians with Plebeians, what is this but to show the utmost contempt of us, and to declare one part of the community to be impure and unclean.

11. They talk to us of the confusion there will be in families if this statute should be repealed. I wonder they don't make a law against a commoner's living near a nobleman or going the fame road that he is going; or being present at the same seast, or appearing in the fame market place.

*12. They might as well pretend that these things make confufion in families, as that intermarriages will do it.Does not every one know that their children will be ranked according to the quality of their father, let him be a Patrician or a Plebeian? In short it is manifest enough that we have nothing in view but to be treated as men and citizens; nor can they, who oppose our demand, have any motive to do it, but the love of domineering.

13. I would fain know of you, Confuls and Patricians, is the fovereign power in the people of Rome, or in you? I hope you will allow, that the people can at their pleasure either make a law or repeal one.

14. And will you, then as foon as any law is proposed to them, pretend to lift them immediately for the war, and hinder them from giving their fuffrages by leading them

into the field P

15. Hear me, Confuls. Whether the news of the war you talk of be true, or whether it be only a false rumour spread abroad for nothing but a colour to send the people out of the city, I declare as Tribune, that this people who have already so often spilt their blood in our country's caufe, are again ready to arm for its defence

S

and its glory, if they may be restored to their natural rights, and you will no longer treat us like strangers in our own country.

16. But if you account us unworthy of your alliance by intermarriages, if you will not fuffer the entrance to the chief offices in the state to be open to all perfons of merit indifferently, but will confine your choice of magistrates to the senate alone; talk of war as much as ever you please; paint, in your ordinary discourses, the league and power of our enemies, ten times more dreadful than you do now, I declare that this people, whom you fo much defpife, and to whom you are nevertheless indebted for all your victories, shall never more inlift themselves; not a man of them shall take any arms! not a man of them shall expose his life for imperious lords, with whom he can neither share the dignities of the state, nor in private life have any alliance by marriage.

SPEECH of PUBLIUS SCIPIO to the ROMAN ARMY before the battle of Ticin.

1.

W

ERE you, foldiers, the fame

army which I had

with me in Gaul, I might well forbear faying any thing at this time; for what occafion could there be to use exhortation to cavalry that had fo signally vanquished the squadrons of the enemy upon the Khone; or to legions, by whom that fame enemy, flying before them to avoid a battle, did in effect confefs themselves conquered?

2.. But, as these troops having been enrolled for Spain are there with my brother Cneius, making war under my aufpicies (as was the will of the fenate and people of Rome) I, that you might have a Conful for your Captain against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, have freely offered myfelf for this war. You then have a new General: and I a new army. On this account, a few words from me to you will be neither improper nor unseasonable.

3. That you may not be unapprised of what fort of enemies you are going to encounter, or of what is to be feared froin them: they are the very fame, whom in a former war, you vanquished both by land sea; the fame from whom you took Sicily and Sardinia, and who have been these twenty year's your tributaries.

4. You will not, I prefume, march against these men with only that courage with which you are wont to face other enemies; but with a certain anger and indignation fuch as you would feel if you saw your slaves on a fudden ise up against you.

5. Conquered and enslaved, it is not boldness, but neceffity that urges them to battle; unless you can believe that those, who avoided fighting when their army was entire, have acquired better hope by the lofs of two thirds of their horfe and foot in paffing the Alps.

6. But you have heard perhaps, that though they are few in number, they are men of stout hearts, and robuft bodies; heroes of fuch strength and vigour, as nothing is able to refift.- Mere effigies! nay shadows of men! wretches, emaciated with hunger, and benumbed with cold; bruised and battered to pieces among the rocks and craggy cliffs! their weapons broken, and their horses weak and foundered! Such are the cavalry, and such the infantry, with which you are going to contend; not enemies but the fragments of enemies.

7. There is nothing which I more apprehend, than that it will be thought Hannibal was vanquished by the Alps before we had any conflict with him. But, perhaps, it was fitting it should be fo; and that, with a people and a leader who had violated leagues and covenants, the gods themselves, without man's help, should begin the war, and bring it to a near conclufion; and that we, who next to the gods, have been injured and offended should happily finish: what they have begun.

8. I need not be in any fear that you should fufpect me of saying these things merely to encourage you, while inwardly I have different sentiments. What hindered me from going to Spain? That was my province, where I should have had the less dreadful Afdrubal, not Hannibal to deal with.

9. But, hearing, as I pafsed along the coast of Gaul, of this enemy's march, I landed my troops, sent the horfe forward, and pitched my camp upon the Rhone. A part of my cavalry encountered and defeated that of the enemy. My infantry not being able to overtake their's, which fled before us, I returned to my fleet; and with all the expedition I could ufe in fo long a voyage by sea and land am come to meet them at the foot of the Alps.

10. Was it, then, my inclination to avoid a contest with

this tremendous Hannibal? and have I met with him only by accident and unawares ? or am I come on purpose to challenge him to the combat ?

11. I would gladly try, whether the earth, within these twenty years, has brought forth a new kind of Carthaginians; or whether they be the fame fort of men who fought at the Ægates, and whom at Eryx, you fuffered to redeem themselves at eighteen denarii a head; whether this Hannibal, for labours and journeys be, as he would be thought, the rival of Hercules; or whether he be what his father left him, a tributary, a vassal, a slave of the Roman people.

12. Did not the concioufness of his wicked deed at Saguntum torment him and make him defperate, he would have fome regard, if not to his conquered country, yet furely to his own family, to his father's memory, to the treaty written with Amilcar's own hand. We might have starved him in Eryx; we might have passed into Africa with our victorious fleet; and in a few days have destroyed Carthage. At their humble supplication, we pardoned them, we releafed them, when they were closely Aut up without a possibility of escaping; we made peace with them when they wers conquered.

13. When they were distressed by the African war, we confidered them, we treated them as people under our protection: And what is the return they make us for all these favors? Under the conduct of a hair-brained young man, they come hither to overturn our ftate, and lay waste our country.

14. I could wish indeed, that it were not fo; and that the war we are now engaged in concerned only our own glory and not our own preservation. But the conteft at present is not for the poffeffion of Sicily and Sardinia, but of Italy itself; nor is there behind us another army, which which if we should not prove corquerors, inay make bead against our victorious enemy.

15. There are no more Alps for them to pass, which might give us leifure to raise new forces; No, foldiers; here you must take your stand, as if you were just now before the walls of Rome. Let every one reflect that he is now to defend not his own person only, but his wife, his children, his helpless infants.

16. Yet let not private confiderations alone poffefs our

minds; let US remember that the eyes of the fenate and the people of Rome are upon us; and that as our force and courage thall now prove, fuck will be the fortune of that city and the Roman Empire.

CATUS MARIUS to the Romans; showing the absurdity of their besitating to confer on him the rank of general, merely on account of bis extraction.

1.

Tis

but too common, my countrymen, to observe a material difference between the behavior of those who stand candidates for places of power and truft, before and after their obtaining them.

2. They folicit them in ore manner, and execute them. another. They let out with great appearance of activity, humility, and moderation; and they quickly fall into floth, pride and avarice.

3. It is undoubtedly, no easy matter to discharge, to the general fatisfaction, the duty of a fupreme commander in troublesome times.

4. To carry on with effect, an expenfive 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 fame time a complicated variety of operations; to concert meafures at home, answerable to the state of things abroad; and to gain every valuable end, in spite of oppofition from the envious, the factious, and the difaffected to do all this, my countrymen, is more difficult than is generally thought.

5. But, befides the disadvantages which are common to me with all others in eminent stations, my cafe is, in this refpect, peculiarly hard; that, whereas a commander of Patrician rank, if he is guilty of a neglect or breach of duty, has his great connections, the antiquity of his family, the important service of his ancestors, and the multitudes he has by power, engaged in his interest, to screen him from condign panifhment-my whole safety depends upon myfelf, which renders it the more indispensably neceffary for me to take care that my conduct be clear and unex ceptionable.

6. Besides I am well aware, my countrymen, that the eye of the public is upon me; and that, though the impar