On
entering, and finding her sitting with her daughter-in-law, nursing the
children of Marcius, Valeria placed her companions in a circle round
them, and spoke as follows: "Volumnia, and you, Virgilia, we have come
to you, as women to women, without any decree of the Senate or
instructions from a magistrate; but Heaven, it would appear, has heard
our prayers, and has inspired us with the idea of coming hither to beg
of you to save our countrymen, and to gain for yourselves greater glory
than that of the Sabine women when they reconciled their husbands and
their fathers. Come with us to Marcius, join us in supplicating him for
mercy, and bear an honourable testimony to your country, that it never
has thought of hurting you, however terribly it has been injured by
Marcius, but that it restores you to him uninjured, although possibly it
will gain no better terms by so doing." When Valeria had spoken thus,
the other women applauded, and Volumnia answered in the following words:
"My friends, besides those sufferings which all are now undergoing, we
are especially to be pitied. We have lost the glory and goodness of our
Marcius, and now see him more imprisoned in than protected by the army
of the enemy. But the greatest misfortune of all is that our country
should have become so weak as to be obliged to rest its hopes of safety
on us. I cannot tell if he will pay any attention to us, seeing that he
has treated his native country with scorn, although he used to love it
better than his mother, his wife, and his children.
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