[52.1] “But from the time when you took up the life of a statesman and engaged in public affairs have I, your mother, enjoyed any pleasure on your account? Nay, it was then that I was most unhappy, seeing you placed in the midst of civil strife. For those very measures which seemed to make you flourish and blow strong in popularity as you opposed the plebeians in behalf of the aristocracy filled me with fear, as I called to mind what the life of man is, how it hangs nicely suspended as in a balance, and had learned from many instances what I had heard and experienced that a kind of divine vengeance opposes men of prominence or a certain envy of men makes war upon them; and I proved a true prophet of what was to be — would to Heaven I had not! At any rate, you were overpowered by the ill-will of your fellow citizens, which burst upon you violently and snatched you away from your country; and my life thereafter — if, indeed I ought to call it life since you departed leaving me and these children, too, desolate — has been spent in this squalor and in these rent garments of mourning. [2] In return for all this I, who was never a burden to you nor ever shall be as long as I live, ask this favour of you — that you will be at last be reconciled to your fellow citizens and cease nursing that implacable anger against your country. In doing this I am but asking to receive what will be a boon common to us both, and not mine alone. [3] For you, if you hearken to me and commit no irreparable deed, will have a mind free and unvexed by any heaven-sent wrath and disquiet, while as for me, the honour I shall receive from the men and women of the city, attending me while I live, will make my life happen, and being paid to my memory after my death, as I may well expect, will bring me everlasting fame. [4] And if there is in very truth a place which will receive men’s souls when released from the body, it is not that subterranean and gloomy place where, men say, the unhappy dwell, that will receive mine, nor the region called the Plain of Lethe, but the pure ether high up in the heavens, where, as report has it, those who are sprung from the gods dwell, enjoying a happy and a blessed life; and to them my soul will relate your piety and the acts of kindness with which you honoured her, and will ever ask the gods to requite you with glorious rewards.
[53.1] “If, however, you treat your mother with indignity and send her away unhonoured, what you yourself will have to suffer for this I cannot say, though I presage no happiness. But even if you should be fortunate in all other respects — for let that be assumed — yet your compunction because of me and my afflictions, haunting you and never giving respite to your soul, will rob your life of the enjoyment of all its blessings; this I do know full well. [2] Veturia, for one thing, after this cruel and irreparable ignominy received before so many witnesses, will not bear to live for a moment; nay, I will kill myself before the eyes of all of you, both friends and enemies, leaving to you in my stead a grievous curse and dire furies to be my avengers. [3] May there be no occasion for this, O gods who guard the empire of the Romans, but inspire Marcius with sentiments of piety and honour; and just as a little while ago at my approach he ordered the axes to be laid aside, the rods to be lowered, and his chair to be taken from the tribunal and placed on the ground, and as for all the other observances by which it is the custom to honour supreme magistrates, he moderated some and did away with others altogether, desiring to make it clear to all that though it was fitting that he should rule all others, by his mother he should be ruled, even so may he now also make me honoured and conspicuous, and by giving me back our common country as a favour, render me, instead of the most ill-starred, the most fortunate of all women. [4] And if it is right and lawful for a mother to grovel at the feet of her son, even to this and every other posture and office of humility will I submit in order to save my country.”
[54.1] With these words she threw herself upon the ground, and embracing the feet of Marcius with both her hands, she kissed them, As soon as she fell prostrate, all the women cried out together, raising a loud and prolonged wailing; and the Volscians who were present at the assembly could not bear the unusual sight, but turned away their eyes. Marcius himself, leaping up from his seat, took his mother in his arms, and raising her up from the ground scarcely breathing, embraced her, and shedding many tears, said: “Yours is the victory, mother, but a victory which will be happy for neither you nor me. For though you have saved your country, you have ruined me, your dutiful and affectionate son.” [2] After saying this, he retired to his tent, bidding his mother, his wife, and his children follow him; and there he passed the rest of the day in considering with them what should be done. The decisions they reached were as follows: That the senate should lay no proposal before the people providing for his return nor should the latter pass any vote till the Volscians should be ready to consider friendship and the termination of the war; that Marcius should break camp and lead his army away as through friendly territory; and that after he had given an accounting to the Volscians of his conduct in the command of their army and recounted the services he had done them, he should ask those who had entrusted him with the army, preferably to admit their enemies into friendship and to conclude a just treaty with them, commissioning them to see that the terms of the agreement were fair and free from guile; [3] but if, becoming puffed up with arrogance over their successes, they should reject an accommodation, he should resign the command they had given him. For they thought that the Volscians would either not bring themselves to choose another commander, for want of a good general, or, if they did run the hazard of handing over their forces to any chance person, they would learn through heavy losses to choose what was advantageous. Such were the subjects of their deliberation and such were the decisions they reached as just and right and calculated to win the good opinion of all men — a thing which Marcius had most at heart. [4] But they were troubled by a suspicion, not unmixed with fear, that an unreasoning mob, now buoyed up with the hope that they had completely crushed their foes, might take their disappointment with uncontrolled anger and as a result put Marcius to death with their own hands as a traitor without even granting him a hearing. However, they determined to submit even to this or to any other danger still more formidable which they might incur in honourably keeping faith. [5] When it was now near sunset, they embraced one another and left the tent, after which the women returned to the city. Then Marcius in an assembly of the troops laid before those present the reasons why he intended to put an end to the war; and after earnestly beseeching the soldiers both to forgive him and, when they returned home, to remember the benefits they had received from him and to strive with him to prevent his suffering any irreparable injury at the hands of the other citizens, and after saying many other things calculated to win their support, he ordered them to make ready to break camp the following night.
[55.1] When the Romans heard that their peril was over — for the report of it was brought before the arrival of the women — they left the city with great joy, and running out to meet them, embraced them, sang songs of triumph, and now all together and now one by one showed all the signs of joy which men who emerge out of great dangers into unexpected good fortune exhibit in both their words and actions. [2] That night, then, they passed in festivities and merry-making. The next day the senate, having been assembled by the consuls, resolved, in the case of Marcius, to postpone to a more suitable occasion such honours as were to be given to him, but as for the women, that not only praise should be bestowed upon them for their zeal, the same to be expressed by a public decree which should gain for them eternal remembrance on the part of future generations, but also a gift of honour, whatever to those receiving it would be most pleasing and most highly prized; and the people ratified this resolution. [3] It occurred to the women after some deliberation to ask for no invidious gift, but to request of the senate permission to found a temple to Fortuna Muliebris on the spot where they had interceded for their country, and to assemble and perform annual sacrifices to her on the day on which they had put an end to the war. However, the senate and people decreed that from the public funds a precinct should be purchased and consecrat
ed to the goddess, and a temple and alter erected upon it, in such manner as the pontiffs should direct, and that sacrifices should be performed at the public expense, the initial ceremonies to be conducted by a woman, whichever one the women themselves should choose to officiate at the rites. [4] The senate having passed this decree, the woman then chosen by the others to be priestess for the first time was Valeria, who had proposed to them the embassy and had persuaded the mother of Marcius to join the others in going out of the city. The first sacrifice was performed on behalf of the people by the women, Valeria beginning the rites, upon the altar raised in the sacred precinct, before the temple and the statue were erected, in the month of December of the following year, on the day of the new moon, which the Greeks call noumênia and the Romans calends; for this was the day which had put an end to the war. [5] The year after the first sacrifice the temple built at public expense was finished and dedicated about the seventh army of the month Quintilis, reckoning by the course of the moon; this, according to the Romans’ calendar, is the day before the nones of Quintilis. The man who dedicated the temple was Proculus Verginius, one of the consuls.
[56.1] It would be in harmony with a formal history and in the interest of correcting those who think that the gods are neither pleased with the honours they receive from men nor displeased with impious and unjust actions, to make known the epiphany of the goddess at that time, not once, but twice, as it is recorded in the books of the pontiffs, to the end that by those who are more scrupulous about preserving the opinions concerning the god which they have received from their ancestors such belief may be maintained firm and undisturbed by misgivings, and that those who, despising the customs of their forefathers, hold that the gods have no power over man’s reason, may, preferably, retract their opinion, or, if they are incurable, that the may become still more odious to the gods and more wretched. [2] It is related, then, that when the senate had ordered that the whole expense both of the temple and of the statue should be defrayed from the public treasury, and the women had caused another statue to be made with the money they themselves had contributed, and both statues had been set up together on the first day of the dedication of the temple, one of them, the one which the women had provided, uttered some words in Latin in a voice both distinct and loud, when many were present. The meaning of the words when translated is as follows: “You have conformed to the holy law of the city, matrons, in dedicating me.” [3] The women who were present were very incredulous, as usually happens in the case of unusual voices and sights, believing that it was not the statue that had spoken, but some human voice; and those particularly who happened at the moment to have their mind on something else and did not see what it was that spoke, showed this incredulity toward those who had seen it. Later, on a second occasion, when the temple was full and there chanced to be a profound silence, the same statue pronounced the same words in a louder voice, so that there was no longer any doubt about it. [4] The senate, upon hearing what had passed, ordered other sacrifices and rites to be performed every year, such as the interpreters of religious rites should direct. And the women upon the advice of their priestess established it as a custom that no women who had been married a second time should crown this statue with garlands or touch it with their hands, but that all the honour and worship paid to it should be committed to the newly-married women. But concerning these matters it was fitting that I should neither omit the native account nor dwell too long upon it. I now return to the point from which I digressed.
[57.1] After the departure of the women from the camp Marcius roused his army about daybreak and led it away as thor a friendly country; and when he came into the territory of the Volscians, he divided among the soldiers all the booty he had taken, without reserving the least thing for himself, and then dismissed them to their homes. The army, accordingly, which had shared in the battles with him, returning loaded with riches, was not displeased with the respite from war and felt well disposed toward him and thought he deserved to be forgiven for not having brought the war to a successful end out of regard for the lamentations and entreaties of his mother. [2] But the young men who had remained at home, envying those who had seen active service the great booty they had won, and being disappointed in their hopes of seeing the pride of the Romans humbled by the capture of their city, were incensed against the general and very bitter; and at last, when they found as leaders of their hatred the men of the greatest power in the nation, they grew wild with rage and committed an impious deed. [3] The one who in particular whetted their anger again Marcius was Tullus Attius, who had about him a large faction collected out of every city. This man had, in fact, long since resolved, being unable to control his jealousy, that if Marcius succeeded and returned to the Volscians after destroying Rome, he would make away with him secretly and by guile, or if, failing in his attempt, he came back leaving the task unfinished, he would deliver him over to his faction as a traitor and have him put to death — a plan which he now proceeded to carry out. [4] And getting together a considerable band, he brought charges against him, drawing false inferences from things that were true and, from what had happened, surmising things street were not going to happen; and he kept bidding him resign his command and give an account of his conduct. For, as I said before, Tullus was general of the forces which had been left in the cities, and had authority both to call an assembly and to summon to trial any man he pleased.
[58.1] Marcius did not think proper to oppose either of these demands, but objected to their order, insisting he ought first to give an account of his conduct in the war, after which he would resign his command if all the Volscians should so decide. But he thought that no single city in which the greater part of the citizens had been corrupted by Tullus ought to be given sole authority in the matter, but rather the whole nation meeting in their lawful assembly, to which it was the custom for them to send deputies from every city when they were to deliberate upon affairs of the greatest importance. [2] This Tullus opposed, well knowing that Marcius, eloquent as he was, when he came to give an account of the many splendid actions he had performed, if he still retained a general’s prestige, would persuade the multitude, and would be so far from suffering the punishment of a traitor that he would actually become still more illustrious and be more highly honoured by them, and would be authorized by general consent to put an end to the war in such manner as he pleased. [3] And for a long time there was great strife as they daily engaged in arguing and wrangling with one another in the assemblies and the forum; for it was not possible for either of them to employ force against the other, since both were protected by the prestige of an equal command. [4] But when there was no end to their contention, Tullus appointed a day on which he commanded Marcius to appear for the purpose of laying down his office and standing trial for treason; and having encouraged some of the most daring, by hopes of rewards, to be the ringleaders in an impious deed, he appeared at the assembly on the day appointed, and coming forward to the tribunal, inveighed at length against Marcius and exhorted the people to use all the force at their command to depose him if he would not voluntarily resign his power.
[59.1] When Marcius had ascended the tribunal in order to make his defence, a great clamour arose from the faction of Tullus, hindering him from speaking; then, with cries of “Hit him,” “Stone him,” the most daring surrounded him and stoned him to death. While he lay where he had been hurled upon the ground in the forum, both those who had been present at the tragedy and those who came there after he was dead bewailed the misfortune of the man who had found so ill a return from them, recounting all the services he had rendered to their state, and they longed to apprehend the murderers for having set the example of a deed that was lawless and prejudicial to their cities, in killing a man, and him a general, by an act of violence without a trial. [2] But most indignant were the men who had taken part in his campaigns; and since they had been unable, while he was living, to prevent his misfortune, they resolved to show fitting gratitude after his death b
y bringing into the forum everything that was necessary for the honour owed to brave men. [3] When all was ready, they laid him, dressed in the garb of a supreme commander, on a couch adorned in a most sumptuous manner, and ordered the booty, the spoils and the crowns, together with the representations of the cities he had taken, to be carried before his bier; and the young men who were the most distinguished for their military achievements took up the bier, and carrying it to the most conspicuous suburb, placed it on the funeral pile that had been prepared, the whole population of the city accompanying the body with lamentations and tears. [4] Then, when they had slain a large number of victims in his honour and offered up all the first-offerings that people make at the funeral piles of kings and commanders of armies, those who had been most closely attached to him remained there till the flames died down, after which they gathered together his remains and buried them in that very place, constructing an imposing monument by heaping up a high mound with the assistance of many hands.
Delphi Complete Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 79) Page 77
