1'Many things would dissuade me from you, citizens, did not zeal for the state overcome all: the resources of the faction, your own submissiveness, the absence of justice, and above all the fact that innocence brings more danger than honour. 2For indeed it pains me to tell how in these fifteen years you have been the plaything of the arrogance of a few, how shamefully and how unavenged your defenders have perished, how your spirit has been corrupted by cowardice and indolence, so that not even now, when your enemies are in your power, do you rise up, and even now you fear those to whom you ought to be a terror.
4But although things are so, still my spirit compels me to confront the power of the faction. 5I at least shall make trial of the liberty that was handed down to me by my father. 5But whether I do so in vain or to good purpose lies in your hands, citizens. 6Nor do I urge you, as your ancestors often did, to go out armed against injustice. 6There is no need of violence, no need of secession; 6they must needs go headlong by their own conduct. 7When Tiberius Gracchus had been killed, who they said was aiming at kingship, prosecutions were held against the Roman plebs; 7after the slaughter of Gaius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, likewise, many people of your order were put to death in prison: of both disasters it was not law but their own caprice that made an end.
8But granted that to restore to the plebs what was theirs was aiming at kingship; 8let whatever cannot be avenged without the blood of citizens be deemed lawfully done. 9In previous years you were silently indignant that the treasury was being plundered, that kings and free peoples were paying tribute to a few nobles, and that the highest glory and the greatest riches were in the hands of those same men. 9Yet they thought it too little to have committed such deeds with impunity, and so at last your laws, your majesty, everything divine and human has been handed over to the enemy. 10Nor are those who did these things ashamed or sorry, but they parade before your eyes in grandeur, displaying their priesthoods and consulships, and some of them their triumphs; 10just as if they held these as an honour and not as plunder.
11Slaves bought with money will not endure unjust commands from their masters; 11do you, citizens, born to command, bear slavery with calm minds? 12But who are these men who have seized the state? 12Men utterly criminal, with bloody hands, of monstrous greed, most guilty and at the same time most arrogant, to whom good faith, honour, piety, in short everything honourable and dishonourable alike, is a source of gain. 13Some of them count it as their protection to have killed tribunes of the plebs, others to have held unjust prosecutions, most of them to have carried out slaughter against you. 14So the worse each man has acted, the safer he is.
14They have shifted fear from their own crime to your cowardice, men whom the desire for the same things, hatred of the same things and fear of the same things have forced together into one. 15But among good men this is friendship, among bad men it is faction. 16But if you cared as much for liberty as they are fired for domination, surely the state would not be laid waste as it now is, and your favours would be in the hands of the best men, not the most audacious. 17Your ancestors, to win their rights and establish their dignity, twice seceded under arms and occupied the Aventine; 17will you not strive with all your might for the liberty which you received from them?
17And all the more vehemently, as it is a greater disgrace to lose what has been won than never to have won it at all. 18Someone will say, "What, then, do you propose?" 18That punishment be exacted from those who have betrayed the state to the enemy, not by force or violence, which it would be more unworthy for you to have done than for them to have suffered, but by prosecutions and by the evidence of Jugurtha himself. 19If he has really surrendered, he will surely obey your commands; 19but if he scorns them, you will of course judge what kind of peace or surrender that is, from which there have come to Jugurtha impunity for his crimes, to a few powerful men the greatest riches, and to the state losses and disgraces; 20unless perhaps you are not yet sated with their domination, and those times please you more than these, when kingdoms, provinces, laws, rights, courts, wars and peace, in short everything divine and human, were in the hands of a few; 20while you, that is the Roman people, unconquered by your enemies, rulers of all nations, thought it enough to keep your lives.
20For as for slavery, which of you dared refuse it? 21And for my part, although I think it most disgraceful for a man to have suffered a wrong without avenging it, still I would calmly allow you to pardon these utterly criminal men, since they are citizens, were it not that mercy would end in ruin. 22For they, such is their insolence, think it too little to have done wrong with impunity unless the licence to do it again is snatched from you, and you will be left with endless anxiety, when you realise that you must either be slaves or keep your liberty by force. 23For what hope is there of good faith or concord?
23They wish to be masters, you to be free; 23they to do wrong, you to prevent it; 23in short, they treat our allies as enemies, our enemies as allies. 24Can there be peace or friendship between minds so opposed? 25Therefore I warn and urge you not to let so great a crime go unpunished. 25It is not embezzlement from the treasury that has been committed, nor money taken from the allies by force, which, though they are grave, are now through habit counted as nothing; 25the authority of the senate has been betrayed to a most bitter enemy, your empire has been betrayed; 25at home and in the field the state has been for sale.
26Unless these things are investigated, unless punishment is exacted from the guilty, what will be left but to live in obedience to those who did them? 26For to do whatever one pleases with impunity, that is to be a king. 27Nor do I urge you, citizens, to prefer that your fellow citizens should have done wrong rather than right, but not to go on ruining the good by pardoning the bad. 28Besides, in a state it is much better to forget a kindness than a wrong: the good man merely becomes more sluggish when you neglect him, but the bad man becomes more wicked. 29Besides, if there were no wrongs done, you would seldom need help.'