1Now that peace had been won, the tribunes pressed the senators to fulfil Publius Valerius' pledge, and pressed Gaius Claudius to free his colleague's shade from the charge of deceit and allow the law to be dealt with. 1The consul said he would not allow the law to be dealt with before he had had a colleague elected in his place. 2These disputes lasted right up to the election for the replacement consul. 2In the month of December, amid the greatest enthusiasm of the senators, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the father of Caeso, was elected consul, to take up office immediately. 3The plebs was dismayed at the prospect of a consul who was angry with them, powerful through the senators' favour, through his own courage and through his three sons, none of whom yielded to Caeso in greatness of spirit, while in applying judgement and restraint, when the situation demanded, they were his superiors.
4As soon as he entered office, in constant speeches from the tribunal he was no more vehement in restraining the plebs than in rebuking the senate, through the slackness of which order the tribunes of the plebs, now perpetual, were reigning by their tongues and their accusations, not as in the republic of the Roman people, but as in a ruined household. 5With his son Caeso, he said, courage, steadfastness and all the glories of youth in war and at home had been driven out of the city of Rome and put to flight; 5talkative, seditious men, seeds of discord, made tribunes a second and a third time by the worst of arts, were living with the licence of kings.
5'Did that Aulus Verginius,' he said, 'because he was not on the Capitol, deserve less punishment than Appius Herdonius? 6Rather more, by Hercules, if one would judge the matter truly. 6Herdonius, if nothing else, by acknowledging himself an enemy all but gave you notice to take up arms; 6this man, by denying that there was a war, took your arms away from you and exposed you defenceless to your slaves and exiles. 7And did you — I shall speak with all respect to Gaius Claudius and the dead Publius Valerius — carry your standards up the Capitoline slope before you removed these enemies from the Forum? 7It is a shame before gods and men.
7When enemies were in the citadel, on the Capitol, and the leader of exiles and slaves, having profaned everything, was living in the shrine of Jupiter Best and Greatest, arms were taken up at Tusculum before they were at Rome; 8it was in doubt whether Lucius Mamilius, the Tusculan leader, or Publius Valerius and Gaius Claudius, the consuls, would free the Roman citadel; 8and we, who formerly would not let the Latins touch arms even in their own defence, when they had an enemy within their borders, would now, had the Latins not taken up arms of their own accord, have been captured and destroyed. 9Is this, tribunes, bringing help to the plebs, to throw it unarmed before the enemy to be butchered?
9Of course, if some man, the humblest of your plebs — that part which you have broken off, as it were, from the rest of the people and made into your own fatherland and private republic — if one of these reported that his house was besieged by an armed band of slaves, you would think that help must be brought: was Jupiter Best and Greatest, hemmed in by the arms of exiles and slaves, worthy of no human help? 11And do these men demand to be held sacrosanct, to whom the gods themselves are neither sacred nor holy? 11But no, overwhelmed though you are by crimes against gods and men, you keep declaring that you will carry your law this year.
11Then, by Hercules, the day on which I was elected consul was a disastrous day for the state, far worse than when Publius Valerius the consul fell, if you do carry it. 12Now first of all,' he said, 'Quirites, my colleague and I intend to lead the legions against the Volsci and Aequi. 12By some fate or other we find the gods more favourable when we are at war than when we are at peace. 12How great the danger from those peoples would have been, had they known that the Capitol was besieged by exiles, it is better to guess from the past than to learn by actual experience.'