Prayer to Jupiter
Jupiter · Juno · MinervaMarcus Manlius, the saviour of the Capitol, is being led to prison on a charge of aiming at kingship. At the foot of that same hill he turns to its gods.
This is not a request but a reproach, and in the form of a question: sicine vestrum militem ac praesidem sinitis vexari? — is this how you allow your own soldier and defender to be harried? The deity is being called to account. Of the prayers in this corpus, it is the only one framed as a grievance.
His title to it is material. Manlius drove the Gauls off the Capitol, woken by Juno's geese; vestrum militem ac praesidem, your soldier and defender, is not a figure of speech but a description of services rendered. He is reminding the gods that he guarded their own property.
Qui Capitolium arcemque incolitis — you who dwell on the Capitol and in the Citadel. The gods are named by their address, like neighbours; he is speaking to the householders of the hill he fought for.
He will be acquitted, condemned again, and thrown from the Tarpeian rock — off the same summit.