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

9. Such marriages, it feems will taint the pure blood of the nobility! Why, if they think fo, 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. Thofe are exploits for our prime nobles.

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

11. They talk to us of the confufion there will be in families if this ftatute fhould be repealed.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 prefent at the fame feaft, 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 fhort it is manifeft enough that we have nothing in view but to be treated as men and citizens; nor can they, who oppofe 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 ?

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

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and its glory, if they may be restored to their natural rights, and you will no longer treat us like ftrangers 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 ftate to be open to all perfons of merit indifferently, but will confine your choice of magiftrates to the fenate alone; talk of war as much as ever you please; paint, in your ordinary difcourfes, 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, fhall never more inlift themselves; not a man of them shall take any arms! not a man of them fhall expofe his life for imperious lords, with whom he can neither share the dignities of the ftate, nor in private life have any alliance by marriage.

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

WERE

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 ufe exhortation to cavalry that had fo fignally vanquifhed the fquadrons 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 con. quered?

2. But, as thefe 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 againit 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 unfeasonable.

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3. That you may not be unapprifed of what fort of enemies you are going to encounter, or of what is to be feared from them they are the very fame, whom in a former war, you vanquished both by land fea; the fame from whom you took Sicily and Sardinia, and who have been thefe twenty years 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 faw your faves on a fudden rife up against you.

5. Conquered and enslaved, it is not boldness, but neceffity that urges them to battle; unless you can believe that thofe, 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 ftout hearts, and fobuft bodies; heroes of fuch ftrength and vigour, as nothing is able to refift.-Mere effigies! nay fhadows of men! wretches, emaciated with hunger, and benumbed with cold bruifed and battered to pieces among the rocks and craggy cliffs! their weapons broken, and their horfes weak and foundered! Such are the cavalry, and fuch 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 fhould be fo; and that, with a people and a leader who had violated leagues and covenants, the gods them felves, without man's help, fhould 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 faying thefe things merely to encourage you, while inwardly I have different fentiments. What hindered me from going to Spain? That was my province, where I fhould have had the lefs dreadful Afdrubal, not Hannibal to deal with.

9. But, hearing, as I paffed along the coaft of Gaul, of this enemy's march, I landed my troops, fent 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 expedi tion I could ufe in fo long a voyage by fea and land am come to meet them at the foot of the Alps.

10. Was it, then, my inclinatioa 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 gates, 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 concioufuefs 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 paffed into Africa with our victorious fleet; and in a few days have deftroyed Carthage. At their humble fupplication, we pardoned them, we releafed them, when they were clofely Aut up without a poffibility of escaping ; we made peace with them when they were conquered.

13. When they were diftreffed by the African war, we confidered them, we treated them as people under our pro tection: 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 fate, and lay waste our country.

14. I could with indeed, that it were not fo; and that the war we are now engaged in concerned only our own glory and not our own prefervation. But the contest at prefent 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 head against our victorious enemy.

15. There are no more Alps for them to pafs, which might give us leilure to raife new forces; No, foldiers; here you must take your ftand, as if you were just now be fore the walls of Rome. Let every one reflect that he is now to defend not his own person only, but his wife, his shildren, 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, fuch will be the fortune of that eity and the Roman Empire.

CAIUS MARIUS to the Romans; shewing the absurdity of their besitating to confer on bim the rank of general, merely on account of bis extraction.

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

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

3. It is undoubtedly, no eafy 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 thofe 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, anfwerable to the state of things abroad; and to gain every valuable end, in fpite 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 difadvantages which are common to me with all others in eminent ftations, 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 fervice of his anceflors, and the multitudes he has by power, engaged in his intereft, to screen him from condign punifhment-my whole fafety depends upon my felf, which renders it the more indifpenfably neceflary for me to take care that my conduct be clear and unex ceptionable.

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