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I discharge you who are present. I discharge all who have served their time. You shall have your recompense. It shall never be said of me that I made use of you when I was in danger, and was ungrateful to you when the peril was past." "Quirites" he had called them; no longer Roman legionaries, proud of their achievements, and glorying in their great commander, but "quirites" plain citizens.

Upon this the leaders come forward in order to concert a treaty, and they not only conclude a peace, but form one state out of two. They associate the regal power, and transfer the entire sovereignty to Rome. The city being thus doubled, that some compliment might be paid to the Sabines, they were called Quirites, from Cures.

Then, directing his words to the populace: "If, Quirites, no concern for your city, or for yourselves, moves you, at least revere the gods of your country, now made captive by the enemy. Jupiter, best and greatest, Queen Juno, and Minerva, and the other gods and goddesses, are being besieged; a camp of slaves now holds possession of the tutelary gods of the state.

The pontiff directed him to take the gown called prætexta, and with his head covered and his hand thrust out under the gown to the chin, standing upon a spear placed under his feet, to say these words: "Janus, Jupiter, father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona, ye Lares, ye gods Novensiles, ye gods Indigetes, ye divinities, under whose power we and our enemies are, and ye dii Manes, I pray you, I adore you, I ask your favour, that you would prosperously grant strength and victory to the Roman people, the Quirites; and that ye may affect the enemies of the Roman people, the Quirites, with terror, dismay, and death.

When they had informed the people of their decision, they sent an embassy to Numa, composed of the leading men of both parties, to beg of him to come to Rome and assume the crown. Numa belonged to a celebrated Sabine city, Cures, from which the united Romans and Sabines called themselves Quirites. He was the son of Pomponius, an honourable citizen, and was the youngest of four brothers.

The consul Appius insisted that the tribune had no jurisdiction over any one except a plebeian; for that he was not a magistrate of the people in general, but only of the commons; and that even he himself could not, according to the usage of their ancestors, by virtue of his authority remove any person, because the words were as follows: "If ye think proper, depart, Quirites."

"There are some points no doubt, Quirites, concerning which the happy tenour of my government is a sufficient indication of my sentiments; and a good prince need not give an express declaration in matters wherein his intention cannot but be clearly understood.

The Romans, one might beforehand have assumed, must have known very well why they called themselves 'Quirites, but it is manifest that this knowledge was not theirs. Why they were addressed as Patres Conscripti is a matter unsettled still.

XXIX. Some say that the name Quirinus, which Romulus received, means Mars; others that it was because his people were called Quirites.

Why, even that plain-speaking, sensible, practical man, Metellus Numidicus, who was not even a philosopher, but only a Roman censor, thus expressed himself in an exhortation to the people to perpetrate matrimony: 'If, O Quirites, we could do without wives, we should all dispense with that subject of care ea molestia careremus; but since nature has so managed it that we cannot live with women comfortably, nor without them at all, let us rather provide for the human race than our own temporary felicity."