“To war succeeded famine, hostilities continued, taxes increased, the land lay untilled. I was compelled to borrow money at exorbitant usury; that loved heritage passed into the hands of strangers. The golden crown and silver chain, bestowed for being the first to enter the enemy’s camp, went next; they are in the coffers of a man who never saw the color of a foeman’s eye nor drew his sword in the State’s behalf. All this not sufficing, my creditor immured me in a foul dungeon beneath his palace; with fifteen pounds of iron, the utmost the law permits, was I loaded; a pound of corn and water was my daily food, and I, a Roman citizen and a centurion, was scourged like a dog. Had I not broken my chain and flung myself upon you for protection, this war-worn body would have been cut in pieces and apportioned among my creditors.
“Comrades on many a bloody field, behold this arm,--which in twenty-eight battles has fought for the liberty of Rome till the hand clave to the sword hilt,--worn by cruel fetters to the bone; this body, seamed with honorable scars, dripping blood from the knotted scourge. Milder tortures would have been reserved for me had I been the betrayer instead of the defender of my country. The laws which consume the poor man’s substance and drain his blood are by usurers enacted, by them are executed. Usurers rob the public chest and parcel out the conquered lands among themselves. Let us, rather than longer submit to such extortion, fling wide the gates to the approaching enemy, leave them to exercise their wisdom in making laws where there are none to govern, levying taxes where there are none to pay, and displaying their valor where there is nought to defend. By the ashes of that ruined home, those loved forms mangled by the Sabine sword and devoured by the vultures of the Apennines, by the sufferings of my remaining children whose young lives are consumed by the tortures from which I have fled, by him who on Olympus holds his awful seat and shakes the nations with his nod, I conjure you to assert the rights of the people and the ancient liberties of Rome.”
The night wind blew in fitful gusts, with occasional dashes of rain, where, grouped around their watch-fires, and sheltered by the dense foliage of a beechen grove, a Roman cohort held its leaguer. Some, their spears thrust into the ground beside them, sat upright against the trees; while others lay at full length, with their heads resting upon their shields.