_CATILINE._
To wash the blackamoor white has been the favorite task of some modern
historians. To find a paradox in character is a relief to the
investigating mind which does not care to walk always in the well-tried
paths, or to follow the grooves made plain and uninteresting by earlier
writers. Tiberius and even Nero have been praised. The memories of our
early years have been shocked by instructions to regard Richard III. and
Henry VIII. as great and scrupulous kings. The devil may have been
painted blacker than he should be, and the minds of just men, who will
not accept the verdict of the majority, have been much exercised to put
the matter right. We are now told that Catiline was a popular hero;
that, though he might have wished to murder Cicero, he was, in
accordance with the practice of his days, not much to be blamed for
that; and that he was simply the follower of the Gracchi, and the
forerunner of Cæsar in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of Rome.[177]
In this there is much that is true. Murder was common. He who had seen
the Sullan proscriptions, as both Catiline and Cicero had done, might
well have learned to feel less scrupulous as to blood than we do in
these days. Even Cicero, who of all the Romans was the most humane--even
he, no doubt, would have been well contented that Catiline should have
been destroyed by the people.[178] Even he was the cause, as we shall
see just now, of the execution of the leaders of the conspirators whom
Catiline left behind him in the city--an execution of which the legality
is at any rate very doubtful. But in judging even of bloodshed we have
to regard the circumstances of the time in the verdicts we give. Our
consciousness of altered manners and of the growth of gentleness force
this upon us. We cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered Cæsar as
we would do those who might now plot the death of a tyrant; nor can we
deal as heavily with the murderers of Cæsar as we would have done then
with Catilinarian conspirators in Rome, had Catiline's conspiracy
succeeded. And so, too, in acknowledging that Catiline was the outcome
of the Gracchi, and to some extent the preparation for Cæsar, we must
again compare him with them, his motives and designs with theirs, before
we can allow ourselves to sympathize with him, because there was much in
them worthy of praise and honor.
That the Gracchi were seditious no historian has, I think, denied. They
were willing to use the usages and laws of the Republic where those
usages and laws assisted them, but as willing to act illegally when the
usages and laws ran counter to them. In the reforms or changes which
they attempted they were undoubtedly rebels; but no reader comes across
the tale of the death, first of one and then of the other, without a
regret. It has to be owned that they were murdered in tumults which they
themselves had occasioned. But they were honest and patriotic. History
has declared of them that their efforts were made with the real purport
of relieving their fellow-countrymen from what they believed to be the
tyranny of oligarchs. The Republic even in their time had become too
rotten to be saved; but the world has not the less given them the credit
for a desire to do good; and the names of the two brothers, rebels as
they were, have come down to us with a sweet savor about them. Cæsar, on
the other hand, was no doubt of the same political party. He too was
opposed to the oligarchs, but it never occurred to him that he could
save the Republic by any struggles after freedom. His mind was not given
to patriotism of that sort--not to memories, not to associations. Even
laws were nothing to him but as they might be useful. To his thinking,
probably even in his early days, the state of Rome required a master.
Its wealth, its pleasures, its soldiers, its power, were there for any
one to take who could take them--for any one to hold who could hold
them. Mr. Beesly, the last defender of Catiline, has stated that very
little was known in Rome of Cæsar till the time of Catiline's
conspiracy, and in that I agree with him. He possessed high family rank,
and had been Quæstor and Ædile; but it was only from this year out that
his name was much in men's mouths, and that he was learning to look into
things. It may be that he had previously been in league with
Catiline--that he was in league with him till the time came for the
great attempt. The evidence, as far as it goes, seems to show that it
was so. Rome had been the prey of many conspiracies. The dominion of
Marius and the dominion of Sulla had been effected by conspiracies. No
doubt the opinion was strong with many that both Cæsar and Crassus, the
rich man, were concerned with Catiline. But Cæsar was very far-seeing,
and, if such connection existed, knew how to withdraw from it when the
time was not found to be opportune. But from first to last he always was
opposed to the oligarchy. The various steps from the Gracchi to him were
as those which had to be made from the Girondists to Napoleon. Catiline,
no doubt, was one of the steps, as were Danton and Robespierre steps.
The continuation of steps in each case was at first occasioned by the
bad government and greed of a few men in power. But as Robespierre was
vile and low, whereas Vergniaud was honest and Napoleon great, so was it
with Catiline between the Gracchi and Cæsar. There is, to my thinking,
no excuse for Catiline in the fact that he was a natural step, not even
though he were a necessary step, between the Gracchi and Cæsar.
I regard as futile the attempts which are made to rewrite history on the
base of moral convictions and philosophical conclusion. History very
often has been, and no doubt often again will be, rewritten, with good
effect and in the service of truth, on the finding of new facts. Records
have been brought to light which have hitherto been buried, and
testimonies are compared with testimonies which have not before been seen
together. But to imagine that a man may have been good who has lain under
the ban of all the historians, all the poets, and all the tellers of
anecdotes, and then to declare such goodness simply in accordance with
the dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is to disturb
rather than to assist history. Of Catiline we at least know that he
headed a sedition in Rome in the year of Cicero's Consulship; that he
left the city suddenly; that he was killed in the neighborhood of Pistoia
fighting against the Generals of the Republic, and that he left certain
accomplices in Rome who were put to death by an edict of the Senate. So
much I think is certain to the most truculent doubter. From his
contemporaries, Sallust and Cicero, we have a very strongly expressed
opinion of his character. They have left to us denunciations of the man
which have made him odious to all after-ages, so that modern poets have
made him a stock character, and have dramatized him as a fiend. Voltaire
has described him as calling upon his fellow-conspirators to murder
Cicero and Cato, and to burn the city. Ben Jonson makes Catiline kill a
slave and mix his blood, to be drained by his friends. "There cannot be a
fitter drink to make this sanction in." The friends of Catiline will say
that this shows no evidence against the man. None, certainly; but it is a
continued expression of the feeling that has prevailed since Catiline's
time. In his own age Cicero and Sallust, who were opposed in all their
political views, combined to speak ill of him. In the next, Virgil makes
him as suffering his punishment in hell.[179] In the next, Velleius
Paterculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom Cicero had
banished.[180] Juvenal makes various allusions to him, but all in the
same spirit. Juvenal cared nothing for history, but used the names of
well-known persons as illustrations of the idea which he was
presenting.[181] Valerius Maximus, who wrote commendable little essays
about all the virtues and all the vices, which he illustrated with the
names of all the vicious and all the virtuous people he knew, is very
severe on Catiline.[182] Florus, who wrote two centuries and a half after
the conspiracy, gives us of Catiline the same personal story as that told
both by Sallust and Cicero: "Debauchery, in the first place; and then the
poverty which that had produced; and then the opportunity of the time,
because the Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline to
conspire for the destruction of his country."[183] Mommsen, who was
certainly biassed by no feeling in favor of Cicero, declares that
Catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that
nefarious age. His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to
history."[184] All this is no evidence. Cicero and Sallust may possibly
have combined to lie about Catiline. Other Roman writers may have
followed them, and modern poets and modern historians may have followed
the Roman writers. It is possible that the world may have been wrong as
to a period of Roman history with which it has thought itself to be well
acquainted; but the world now has nothing to go by but the facts as they
have come down to it. The writers of the ages since have combined to
speak of Cicero with respect and admiration. They have combined, also, to
speak of Catiline with abhorrence. They have agreed, also, to treat those
other rebels, the Gracchi, after such a fashion that, in spite of their
sedition, a sweet savor, as I have said, attaches itself to their names.
For myself, I am contented to take the opinion of the world, and feel
assured that I shall do no injustice in speaking of Catiline as all who
have written about him hitherto have spoken of him I cannot consent to
the building up of a noble patriot out of such materials as we have
concerning him.[185]
Two strong points have been made for Catiline in Mr. Beesly's defence.
His ancestors had been Consuls when the forefathers of patricians of a
later date "were clapping their chapped hands and throwing up their
sweaty nightcaps." That scorn against the people should be expressed by
the aristocrat Casca was well supposed by Shakspeare; but how did a
liberal of the present day bring himself to do honor to his hero by such
allusions? In truth, however, the glory of ancient blood and the
disgrace attaching to the signs of labor are ideas seldom relinquished
even by democratic minds. A Howard is nowhere lovelier than in America,
or a sweaty nightcap less relished. We are then reminded how Catiline
died fighting, with the wounds all in front; and are told that the
"world has generally a generous word for the memory of a brave man dying
for his cause, be that cause what it will; but for Catiline none!" I
think there is a mistake in the sentiment expressed here. To die readily
when death must come is but a little thing, and is done daily by the
poorest of mankind. The Romans could generally do it, and so can the
Chinese. A Zulu is quite equal to it, and people lower in civilization
than Chinese or Zulus. To encounter death, or the danger of death, for
the sake of duty--when the choice is there; but duty and death are
preferred to ignominious security, or, better still, to security which
shall bring with it self-abasement--that is grand. When I hear that a
man "rushed into the field and, foremost fighting, fell," if there have
been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool. If it be that he has
chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was Catiline's case, I
recognize him as having been endowed with certain physical attributes
which are neither glorious nor disgraceful. That Catiline was
constitutionally a brave man no one has denied. Rush, the murderer, was
one of the bravest men of whom I remember to have heard. What credit is
due to Rush is due to Catiline.
What we believe to be the story of Catiline's life is this: In Sulla's
time he was engaged, as behooved a great nobleman of ancient blood, in
carrying out the Dictator's proscriptions and in running through
whatever means he had. There are fearful stories told of him as to
murdering his own son and other relatives; as to which Mr. Beesly is no
doubt right in saying that such tales were too lightly told in Rome to
deserve implicit confidence. To serve a purpose any one would say
anything of any enemy. Very marvellous qualities are attributed to
him--as to having been at the same time steeped in luxury and yet able
and willing to bear all bodily hardships. He probably had been engaged
in murders--as how should a man not have been so who had served under
Sulla during the Dictatorship? He had probably allured some young
aristocrats into debauchery, when all young aristocrats were so allured.
He had probably undergone some extremity of cold and hunger. In reading
of these things the reader will know by instinct how much he may
believe, and how much he should receive as mythic. That he was a fast
young nobleman, brought up to know no scruples, to disregard blood, and
to look upon his country as a milch cow from which a young nobleman
might be fed with never-ending streams of rich cream in the shape of
money to be borrowed, wealth to be snatched, and, above all, foreigners
to be plundered, we may take, I think, as proved. In spite of his vices,
or by aid of them, he rose in the service of his country. That such a
one should become a Prætor and a Governor was natural. He went to Africa
with proconsular authority, and of course fleeced the Africans. It was
as natural as that a flock of sheep should lose their wool at shearing
time. He came back intent, as was natural also, on being a Consul, and
of carrying on the game of promotion and of plunder. But there came a
spoke in his wheel--the not unusual spoke of an accusation from the
province. While under accusation for provincial robbery he could not
come forward as a candidate, and thus he was stopped in his career.
It is not possible now to unravel all the personal feuds of the
time--the ins and outs of family quarrels. Clodius--the Clodius who was
afterward Cicero's notorious enemy and the victim of Milo's fury--became
the accuser of Catiline on behalf of the Africans. Though Clodius was
much the younger, they were men of the same class. It may be possible
that Clodius was appointed to the work--as it had been intended that
Cæcilius should be appointed at the prosecution of Verres--in order to
assure not the conviction but the acquittal of the guilty man. The
historians and biographers say that Clodius was at last bought by a
bribe, and that he betrayed the Africans after that fashion. It may be
that such bribery was arranged from the first. Our interest in that
trial lies in the fact that Cicero no doubt intended, from political
motives, to defend Catiline. It has been said that he did do so. As far
as we know, he abandoned the intention. We have no trace of his speech,
and no allusion in history to an occurrence which would certainly have
been mentioned.[186] But there was _no_ reason why he should not have
done so. He defended Fonteius, and I am quite willing to own that he
knew Fonteius to have been a robber. When I look at the practice of our
own times, I find that thieves and rebels are defended by honorable
advocates, who do not scruple to take their briefs in opposition to
their own opinions. It suited Cicero to do the same. If I were detected
in a plot for blowing up a Cabinet Council, I do not doubt but that I
should get the late attorney-general to defend me.[187]
But Catiline, though he was acquitted, was balked in his candidature for
the Consulship of the next year, B.C. 65. P. Sulla and Autronius were
elected--that Sulla to whose subsequent defence I have just referred in
this note--but were ejected on the score of bribery, and two others,
Torquatus and Cotta, were elected in their place. In this way three men
standing on high before their countrymen--one having been debarred from
standing for the Consulship, and the other two having been robbed of
their prize even when it was within their grasp--not unnaturally became
traitors at heart. Almost as naturally they came together and conspired.
Why should they have been selected as victims, having only done that
which every aristocrat did as a matter of course in following out his
recognized profession in living upon the subject nations? Their conduct
had probably been the same as that of others, or if more glaring, only
so much so as is always the case with vices as they become more common.
However, the three men fell, and became the centre of a plot which is
known as the first Catiline conspiracy.
The reader must bear in mind that I am now telling the story of
Catiline, and going back to a period of two years before Cicero's
Consulship, which was B.C. 63. How during that year Cicero successfully
defended Murena when Cato endeavored to rob him of his coming
Consulship, has been already told. It may be that Murena's hands were no
cleaner than those of Sulla and Autronius, and that they lacked only the
consular authority and forensic eloquence of the advocate who defended
Murena. At this time, when the two appointed Consuls were rejected,
Cicero had hardly as yet taken any part in public politics. He had been
Quæstor, Ædile, and Prætor, filling those administrative offices to the
best of his ability. He had, he says, hardly heard of the first
conspiracy.[189] That what he says is true, is, I think, proved by the
absence of all allusion to it in his early letters, or in the speeches
or fragments of speeches that are extant. But that there was such a
conspiracy we cannot doubt, nor that the three men named, Catiline,
Sulla, and Autronius, were leaders in it. What would interest us, if
only we could have the truth, is whether Cæsar and Crassus were joined
in it.
It is necessary again to consider the condition of the Republic. To us a
conspiracy to subvert the government under which the conspirer lives
seems either a very terrible remedy for great evils, or an attempt to do
evil which all good men should oppose. We have the happy conspiracy in
which Washington became the military leader, and the French Revolution,
which, bloody as it was, succeeded in rescuing Frenchmen from the
condition of serfdom. At home we have our own conspiracy against the
Stuart royalty, which had also noble results. The Gracchi had attempted
to effect something of the same kind at Rome; but the moral condition of
the people had become so low that no real love of liberty remained.
Conspiracy! oh yes. As long as there was anything to get, of course he
who had not got it would conspire against him who had. There had been
conspiracies for and against Marius, for and against Cinna, for and
against Sulla. There was a grasping for plunder, a thirst for power
which meant luxury, a greed for blood which grew from the hatred which
such rivalry produced. These were the motive causes for conspiracies;
not whether Romans should be free but whether a Sulla or a Cotta should
be allowed to run riot in a province.
Cæsar at this time had not done much in the Roman world except fall
greatly into debt. Knowing, as we do know now, his immense intellectual
capacity, we cannot doubt but at the age he had now reached,
thirty-five, B.C. 65, he had considered deeply his prospects in life.
There is no reason for supposing that he had conceived the idea of being
a great soldier. That came to him by pure accident, some years
afterward. To be Quæstor, Prætor, and Consul, and catch what was going,
seems to have been the cause to him of having encountered extraordinary
debt. That he would have been a Verres, or a Fonteius, or a Catiline, we
certainly are not entitled to think. Over whatever people he might have
come to reign, and in whatever way he might have procured his kingdom,
he would have reigned with a far-seeing eye, fixed upon future results.
At this period he was looking out for a way to advance himself. There
were three men, all just six years his senior, who had risen or were
rising into great repute; they were Pompey, Cicero, and Catiline. There
were two who were noted for having clean hands in the midst of all the
dirt around; and they were undoubtedly the first Romans of the day.
Catiline was determined that he too would be among the first Romans of
the day; but his hands had never been clean. Which was the better way
for such a one as Cæsar to go?
To have had Pompey under his feet, or Cicero, must have then seemed to
Cæsar to be impracticable, though the time came when he did, in
different ways, have his feet on both. With Catiline the chance of
success might be better. Crassus he had already compassed. Crassus was
like M. Poirier in the play--a man who, having become rich, then allowed
himself the luxury of an ambition. If Cæsar joined the plot we can well
understand that Crassus should have gone with him. We have all but
sufficient authority for saying that it was so, but authority
insufficient for declaring it. That Sallust, in his short account of the
first conspiracy, should not have implicated Cæsar was a matter of
course,[190] as he wrote altogether in Cæsar's interest. That Cicero
should not have mentioned it is also quite intelligible. He did not wish
to pull down upon his ears the whole house of the aristocracy.
Throughout his career it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law
with what smallest breach of it might be possible; but he was wise
enough to know that when the laws were being broken on every side he
could not catch in his nets all those who broke them. He had to pass
over much; to make the best of the state of things as he found them. It
is not to be supposed that a conspirator against the Republic would be
horrible to him, as would be to us a traitor against the Crown: there
were too many of them for horror. If Cæsar and Crassus could be got to
keep themselves quiet, he would be willing enough not to have to add
them to his list of enemies. Livy is presumed to have told us that this
conspiracy intended to restore the ejected Consuls, and to kill the
Consuls who had been established in their place. But the book in which
this was written is lost, and we have only the Epitome, or heading of
the book, of which we know that it was not written by Livy.[191]
Suetonius, who got his story not improbably from Livy, tells us that
Cæsar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with Crassus;[192]
and he goes on to say that Cicero, writing subsequently to one Axius,
declared that "Cæsar had attempted in his Consulship to accomplish the
dominion which he had intended to grasp in his Ædileship" the year in
question. There is, however, no such letter extant. Asconius, who, as I
have said before, wrote in the time of Tiberius, declares that Cicero in
his lost oration, "In toga candida," accused Crassus of having been the
author of the conspiracy. Such is the information we have; and if we
elect to believe that Cæsar was then joined with Catiline, we must be
guided by our ideas of probability rather than by evidence.[193] As I
have said before, conspiracies had been very rife. To Cæsar it was no
doubt becoming manifest that the Republic, with its oligarchs, must
fall. Subsequently it did fall, and he was--I will not say the
conspirator, nor will I judge the question by saying that he was the
traitor; but the man of power who, having the legions of the Republic in
his hands, used them against the Republic. I can well understand that he
should have joined such a conspiracy as this first of Catiline, and then
have backed out of it when he found he could not trust those who were
joined with him.
This conspiracy failed. One man omitted to give a signal at one time,
and another at another. The Senate was to have been slaughtered; the two
Consuls, Cotta and Torquatus, murdered, and the two ex-Consuls, Sulla
and Autronius, replaced. Though all the details seem to have been known
to the Consuls, Catiline was allowed to go free, nor were any steps
taken for the punishment of the conspirators.
The second conspiracy was attempted in the Consulship of Cicero, B.C.
63, two years after the first. Catiline had struggled for the
Consulship, and had failed. Again there would be no province, no
plunder, no power. This interference, as it must have seemed to him,
with his peculiar privileges, had all come from Cicero. Cicero was the
busybody who was attempting to stop the order of things which had, to
his thinking, been specially ordained by all the gods for the sustenance
of one so well born, and at the same time so poor, as himself. There was
a vulgar meddling about it--all coming from the violent virtue of a
Consul whose father had been a nobody at Arpinum--which was well
calculated to drive Catiline into madness. So he went to work and got
together in Rome a body of men as discontented and almost as nobly born
as himself, and in the country north of Rome an army of rebels, and
began his operations with very little secrecy. In all the story the most
remarkable feature is the openness with which many of the details of the
conspiracy were carried on. The existence of the rebel army was known;
it was known that Catiline was the leader; the causes of his
disaffection were known; his comrades in guilt were known When any
special act was intended, such as might be the murder of the Consul or
the firing of the city, secret plots were concocted in abundance. But
the grand fact of a wide-spread conspiracy could go naked in Rome, and
not even a Cicero dare to meddle with it.
[Sidenote: B.C. 63, ætat. 44.]
As to this second conspiracy, the conspiracy with which Sallust and
Cicero have made us so well acquainted, there is no sufficient ground
for asserting that Cæsar was concerned in it.[194] That he was greatly
concerned in the treatment of the conspirators there is no doubt. He had
probably learned to appreciate the rage, the madness, the impotence of
Catiline at their proper worth. He too, I think, must have looked upon
Cicero as a meddling, over-virtuous busybody; as did even Pompey when he
returned from the East. What practical use could there be in such a man
at such a time--in one who really believed in honesty, who thought of
liberty and the Republic, and imagined that he could set the world right
by talking? Such must have been the feeling of Cæsar, who had both
experience and foresight to tell him that Rome wanted and must have a
master. He probably had patriotism enough to feel that he, if he could
acquire the mastership, would do something beyond robbery--would not
satisfy himself with cutting the throats of all his enemies, and feeding
his supporters with the property of his opponents. But Cicero was
impracticable--unless, indeed, he could be so flattered as to be made
useful. It was thus, I think, that Cæsar regarded Cicero, and thus that
he induced Pompey to regard him. But now, in the year of his Consulship,
Cicero had really talked himself into power, and for this year his
virtue must be allowed to have its full way.
He did so much in this year, was so really efficacious in restraining
for a time the greed and violence of the aristocracy, that it is not
surprising that he was taught to believe in himself. There were, too,
enough of others anxious for the Republic to bolster him up in his own
belief. There was that Cornelius in whose defence Cicero made the two
great speeches which have been unfortunately lost, and there was Cato,
and up to this time there was Pompey, as Cicero thought. Cicero, till he
found himself candidate for the Consulship, had contented himself with
undertaking separate cases, in which, no doubt, politics were concerned,
but which were not exclusively political. He had advocated the
employment of Pompey in the East, and had defended Cornelius. He was
well acquainted with the history of the Republic; but he had probably
never asked himself the question whether it was in mortal peril, and if
so, whether it might possibly be saved. In his Consulship he did do so;
and, seeing less of the Republic than we can see now, told himself that
it was possible.
The stories told to us of Catiline's conspiracy by Sallust and by Cicero
are so little conflicting that we can trust them both. Trusting them
both, we are justified in believing that we know the truth. We are here
concerned only with the part which Cicero took. Nothing, I think, which
Cicero says is contradicted by Sallust, though of much that Cicero
certainly did Sallust is silent. Sallust damns him, but only by faint
praise. We may, therefore, take the account of the plot as given by
Cicero himself as verified: indeed, I am not aware that any of Cicero's
facts have been questioned.
Sallust declares that Catiline's attempt was popular in Rome
generally.[195] This, I think, must be taken as showing simply that
revolution and conspiracy were in themselves popular: that, as a
condition of things around him such as existed in Rome, a plotter of
state plots should be able to collect a body of followers, was a thing
of course; that there were many citizens who would not work, and who
expected to live in luxury on public or private plunder, is certain.
When the conspiracy was first announced in the Senate, Catiline had an
army collected; but we have no proof that the hearts of the inhabitants
of Rome generally were with the conspirators. On the other hand, we have
proof, in the unparalleled devotion shown by the citizens to Cicero
after the conspiracy was quelled, that their hearts were with him. The
populace, fond of change, liked a disturbance; but there is nothing to
show that Catiline was ever beloved as had been the Gracchi, and other
tribunes of the people who came after them.
Catiline, in the autumn of the year B.C. 63, had arranged the outside
circumstances of his conspiracy, knowing that he would, for the third
time, be unsuccessful in his canvass for the Consulship. That Cicero
with other Senators should be murdered seems to have been their first
object, and that then the Consulship should be seized by force. On the
21st of October Cicero made his first report to the Senate as to the
conspiracy, and called upon Catiline for his answer. It was then that
Catiline made his famous reply: "That the Republic had two bodies, of
which one was weak and had a bad head"--meaning the aristocracy, with
Cicero as its chief--"and the other strong, but without any head,"
meaning the people; "but that as for himself, so well had the people
deserved of him, that as long as he lived a head should be
forth-coming."[196] Then, at that sitting, the Senate decreed, in the
usual formula, "That the Consuls were to take care that the Republic did
not suffer."[197] On the 22d of October, the new Consuls, Silanus and
Murena, were elected. On the 23d, Catiline was regularly accused of
conspiracy by Paulus Lepidus, a young nobleman, in conformity with a law
which had been enacted fifty-five years earlier, "de vi publica," as to
violence applied to the State. Two days afterward it was officially
reported that Manlius--or Mallius, as he seems to have been generally
called--Catiline's lieutenant, had openly taken up arms in Etruria. The
27th had been fixed by the conspirators for the murder of Cicero and the
other Senators. That all this was to be, and was so arranged by
Catiline, had been declared in the Senate by Cicero himself on that day
when Catiline told them of the two bodies and the two heads. Cicero,
with his intelligence, ingenuity, and industry, had learned every
detail. There was one Curius among the conspirators, a fair specimen of
the young Roman nobleman of the day, who told it all to his mistress
Fulvia, and she carried the information to the Consul. It is all
narrated with fair dramatic accuracy in Ben Jonson's dull play, though
he has attributed to Cæsar a share in the plot, for doing which he had
no authority. Cicero, on that sitting in the Senate, had been specially
anxious to make Catiline understand that he knew privately every
circumstance of the plot. Throughout the whole conspiracy his object was
not to take Catiline, but to drive him out of Rome. If the people could
be stirred up to kill him in their wrath, that might be well; in that
way there might be an end of all the trouble. But if that did not come
to pass, then it would be best to make the city unbearable to the
conspirators. If they could be driven out, they must either take
themselves to foreign parts and be dispersed, or must else fight and
assuredly be conquered. Cicero himself was never blood-thirsty, but the
necessity was strong upon him of ridding the Republic from these
blood-thirsty men.
The scheme for destroying Cicero and the Senators on the 27th of October
had proved abortive. On the 6th of the next month a meeting was held in
the house of one Marcus Porcius Læca, at which a plot was arranged for
the killing of Cicero the next day--for the killing of Cicero alone--he
having been by this time found to be the one great obstacle in their
path. Two knights were told off for the service, named Vargunteius and
Cornelius. These, after the Roman fashion, were to make their way early
on the following morning into the Consul's bedroom for the ostensible
purpose of paying him their morning compliments, but, when there, they
were to slay him. All this, however, was told to Cicero, and the two
knights, when they came, were refused admittance. If Cicero had been a
man given to fear, as has been said of him, he must have passed a
wretched life at this period. As far as I can judge of his words and
doings throughout his life, he was not harassed by constitutional
timidity. He feared to disgrace his name, to lower his authority, to
become small in the eyes of men, to make political mistakes, to do that
which might turn against him. In much of this there was a falling off
from that dignity which, if we do not often find it in a man, we can all
of us imagine; but of personal dread as to his own skin, as to his own
life, there was very little. At this time, when, as he knew well, many
men with many weapons in their hands, men who were altogether
unscrupulous, were in search for his blood he never seems to have
trembled.
But all Rome trembled--even according to Sallust. I have already shown
how he declares in one part of his narrative that the common people as a
body were with Catiline, and have attempted to explain what was meant by
that expression. In another, in an earlier chapter, he says "that the
State," meaning the city, "was disturbed by all this, and its appearance
changed.[198] Instead of the joy and ease which had lately prevailed,
the effect of the long peace, a sudden sadness fell upon every one." I
quote the passage because that other passage has been taken as proving
the popularity of Catiline. There can, I think, be no doubt that the
population of Rome was, as a body, afraid of Catiline. The city was to
be burnt down, the Consuls and the Senate were to be murdered, debts
were to be wiped out, slaves were probably to be encouraged against
their masters. The "permota civitas" and the "cuncta plebes," of which
Sallust speaks, mean that all the "householders" were disturbed, and
that all the "roughs" were eager with revolutionary hopes.
On the 8th of November, the day after that on which the Consul was to
have been murdered in his own house, he called a special meeting of the
Senate in the temple of Jupiter Stator. The Senate in Cicero's time was
convened according to expedience, or perhaps as to the dignity of the
occasion, in various temples. Of these none had a higher reputation than
that of the special Jupiter who is held to have befriended Romulus in
his fight with the Sabines. Here was launched that thunderbolt of
eloquence which all English school-boys have known for its "Quousque
tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra." Whether it be from the awe
which has come down to me from my earliest years, mixed perhaps with
something of dread for the great pedagogue who first made the words to
sound grandly in my ears, or whether true critical judgment has since
approved to me the real weight of the words, they certainly do contain
for my intelligence an expression of almost divine indignation. Then
there follows a string of questions, which to translate would be vain,
which to quote, for those who read the language, is surely unnecessary.
It is said to have been a fault with Cicero that in his speeches he runs
too much into that vein of wrathful interrogation which undoubtedly
palls upon us in English oratory when frequent resort is made to it. It
seems to be too easy, and to contain too little of argument. It was
this, probably, of which his contemporaries complained when they
declared him to be florid, redundant, and Asiatic in his style.[199]
This questioning runs through nearly the whole speech, but the reader
cannot fail to acknowledge its efficacy in reference to the matter in
hand. Catiline was sitting there himself in the Senate, and the
questions were for the most part addressed to him. We can see him now, a
man of large frame, with bold, glaring eyes, looking in his wrath as
though he were hardly able to keep his hands from the Consul's throat,
even there in the Senate. Though he knew that this attack was to be made
on him, he had stalked into the temple and seated himself in a place of
honor, among the benches intended for those who had been Consuls. When
there, no one spoke to him, no one saluted him. The consular Senators
shrunk away, leaving their places of privilege. Even his
brother-conspirators, of whom many were present, did not dare to
recognize him. Lentulus was no doubt there, and Cethegus, and two of the
Sullan family, and Cassius Longinus, and Autronius, and Læca, and
Curius. All of them were or had been conspirators in the same cause.
Cæsar was there too, and Crassus. A fellow conspirator with Catiline
would probably be a Senator. Cicero knew them all. We cannot say that in
this matter Cæsar was guilty, but Cicero, no doubt, felt that Cæsar's
heart was with Catiline. It was his present task so to thunder with his
eloquence that he should turn these bitter enemies into seeming
friends--to drive Catiline from out of the midst of them, so that it
should seem that he had been expelled by those who were in truth his
brother-conspirators; and this it was that he did.
He declared the nature of the plot, and boldly said that, such being the
facts, Catiline deserved death. "If," he says, "I should order you to be
taken and killed, believe me I should be blamed rather for my delay in
doing so than for my cruelty." He spoke throughout as though all the
power were in his own hands, either to strike or to forbear. But it was
his object to drive him out and not to kill him. "Go," he said; "that
camp of yours and Mallius, your lieutenant, are too long without you.
Take your friends with you. Take them all. Cleanse the city of your
presence. When its walls are between you and me then I shall feel myself
secure. Among us here you may no longer stir yourself. I will not have
it--I will not endure it. If I were to suffer you to be killed, your
followers in the conspiracy would remain here; but if you go out, as I
desire you, this cesspool of filth will drain itself off from out the
city. Do you hesitate to do at my command that which you would fain do
yourself? The Consul requires an enemy to depart from the city. Do you
ask me whether you are to go into exile? I do not order it; but if you
ask my counsel, I advise it." Exile was the severest punishment known by
the Roman law, as applicable to a citizen, and such a punishment it was
in the power of no Consul or other officer of state to inflict. Though
he had taken upon himself the duty of protecting the Republic, still he
could not condemn a citizen. It was to the moral effect of his words
that he must trust: "Non jubeo, sed si me consulis, suadeo." Catiline
heard him to the end, and then, muttering a curse, left the Senate, and
went out of the city. Sallust tells us that he threatened to extinguish,
in the midst of the general ruin he would create, the flames prepared
for his own destruction. Sallust, however, was not present on the
occasion, and the threat probably had been uttered at an earlier period
of Catiline's career. Cicero tells us expressly, in one of his
subsequent works, that Catiline was struck dumb.[200]
Of this first Catiline oration Sallust says, that "Marcus Tullius the
Consul, either fearing the presence of the man, or stirred to anger,
made a brilliant speech, very useful to the Republic."[201] This, coming
from an enemy, is stronger testimony to the truth of the story told by
Cicero, than would have been any vehement praise from the pen of a
friend.
Catiline met some of his colleagues the same night. They were the very
men who as Senators had been present at his confusion, and to them he
declared his purpose of going. There was nothing to be done in the city
by him. The Consul was not to be reached. Catiline himself was too
closely watched for personal action. He would join the army at Fæsulæ
and then return and burn the city. His friends, Lentulus, Cethegus, and
the others, were to remain and be ready for fire and slaughter as soon
as Catiline with his army should appear before the walls. He went, and
Cicero had been so far successful.
But these men, Lentulus, Cethegus, and the other Senators, though they
had not dared to sit near Catiline in the Senate, or to speak a word to
him, went about their work zealously when evening had come. A report was
spread among the people that the Consul had taken upon himself to drive
a citizen into exile. Catiline, the ill-used Catiline--Catiline, the
friend of the people, had, they said, gone to Marseilles in order that
he might escape the fury of the tyrant Consul. In this we see the
jealousy of Romans as to the infliction of any punishment by an
individual officer on a citizen. It was with a full knowledge of what
was likely to come that Cicero had ironically declared that he only
advised the conspirator to go. The feeling was so strong that on the
next morning he found himself compelled to address the people on the
subject. Then was uttered the second Catiline oration, which was spoken
in the open air to the citizens at large. Here too there are words,
among those with which he began his speech, almost as familiar to us as
the "Quousque tandem"--"Abiit; excessit; evasit; erupit!" This Catiline,
says Cicero, this pest of his country, raging in his madness, I have
turned out of the city. If you like it better, I have expelled him by my
very words. "He has departed. He has fled. He has gone out from among
us. He has broken away!" "I have made this conspiracy plain to you all,
as I said I would, unless indeed there may be some one here who does not
believe that the friends of Catiline will do the same as Catiline would
have done. But there is no time now for soft measures. We have to be
strong-handed. There is one thing I will do for these men. Let them too
go out, so that Catiline shall not pine for them. I will show them the
road. He has gone by the Via Aurelia. If they will hurry they may catch
him before night." He implies by this that the story about Marseilles
was false. Then he speaks with irony of himself as that violent Consul
who could drive citizens into exile by the very breath of his mouth.
"Ego vehemens ille consul qui verbo cives in exsilium ejicio." So he
goes on, in truth defending himself, but leading them with him to take
part in the accusation which he intends to bring against the chief
conspirators who remain in the city. If they too will go, they may go
unscathed; if they choose to remain, let them look to themselves.
Through it all we can see there is but one thing that he fears--that he
shall be driven by the exigencies of the occasion to take some steps
which shall afterward be judged not to have been strictly legal, and
which shall put him into the power of his enemies when the day of his
ascendency shall have passed away. It crops out repeatedly in these
speeches.[202] He seems to be aware that some over-strong measure will
be forced upon him for which he alone will be held responsible. If he
can only avoid that, he will fear nothing else; if he cannot avoid it,
he will encounter even that danger. His foresight was wonderfully
accurate. The strong hand was used, and the punishment came upon him,
not from his enemies but from his friends, almost to the bursting of his
heart.
Though the Senate had decreed that the Consuls were to see that the
Republic should take no harm, and though it was presumed that
extraordinary power was thereby conferred, it is evident that no power
was conferred of inflicting punishment. Antony, as Cicero's colleague,
was nothing. The authority, the responsibility, the action were, and
were intended, to remain with Cicero. He could not legally banish any
one. It was only too evident that there must be much slaughter. There
was the army of rebels with which it would be necessary to fight. Let
them go, these rebels within the city, and either join the army and get
themselves killed, or else disappear, whither they would, among the
provinces. The object of this second Catiline oration, spoken to the
people, was to convince the remaining conspirators that they had better
go, and to teach the citizens generally that in giving such counsel he
was "banishing" no one. As far as the citizens were concerned he was
successful; but he did not induce the friends of Catiline to follow
their chief. This took place on the 9th of November. After the oration
the Senate met again, and declared Catiline and Mallius to be public
enemies.
Twenty-four days elapsed before the third speech was spoken--twenty-four
days during which Rome must have been in a state of very great fever.
Cicero was actively engaged in unravelling the plots the details of
which were still being carried on within the city; but nevertheless he
made that speech for Murena before the judicial bench of which I gave an
account in the last chapter, and also probably another for Piso, of
which we have nothing left. We cannot but marvel that he should have
been able at such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and
carefully to study all the details of legal cases. It was only on
October 21st that Murena had been elected Consul; and yet on the 20th of
November Cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of bribery.
There is an ease, a playfulness, a softness, a drollery about this
speech which appears to be almost incompatible with the stern, absorbing
realities and great personal dangers in the midst of which he was
placed; but the agility of his mind was such that there appears to have
been no difficulty to him in these rapid changes.
On the same day, the 20th of November, when Cicero was defending Murena,
the plot was being carried on at the house of a certain Roman lady named
Sempronia. It was she of whom Sallust said that she danced better than
became an honest woman. If we can believe Sallust, she was steeped in
luxury and vice. At her house a most vile project was hatched for
introducing into Rome Rome's bitterest foreign foes. There were in the
city at this time certain delegates from a people called the Allobroges,
who inhabited the lower part of Savoy. The Allobroges were of Gaulish
race. They were warlike, angry, and at the present moment peculiarly
discontented with Rome. There had been certain injuries, either real or
presumed, respecting which these delegates had been sent to the city.
There they had been delayed, and fobbed off with official replies which
gave no satisfaction, and were supposed to be ready to do any evil
possible to the Republic. What if they could be got to go back suddenly
to their homes, and bring a legion of red-haired Gauls to assist the
conspirators in burning down Rome? A deputation from the delegates came
to Sempronia's house and there met the conspirators--Lentulus and
others. They entered freely into the project; but having, as was usual
with foreign embassies at Rome, a patron or peculiar friend of their own
among the aristocracy, one Fabius Sanga by name, they thought it well to
consult him.[203] Sanga, as a matter of course, told everything to our
astute Consul.
Then the matter was arranged with more than all the craft of a modern
inspector of police. The Allobroges were instructed to lend themselves
to the device, stipulating, however, that they should have a written
signed authority which they could show to their rulers at home. The
written signed documents were given to them. With certain conspirators
to help them out of the city they were sent upon their way. At a bridge
over the Tiber they were stopped by Cicero's emissaries. There was a
feigned fight, but no blood was shed; and the ambassadors with their
letters were brought home to the Consul.
We are astonished at the marvellous folly of these conspirators, so that
we could hardly have believed the story had it not been told alike by
Cicero and by Sallust, and had not allusion to the details been common
among later writers.[204] The ambassadors were taken at the Milvian
bridge early on the morning of the 3d of December, and in the course of
that day Cicero sent for the leaders of the conspiracy to come to him.
Lentulus, who was then Prætor, Cethegus, Gabinius, and Statilius all
obeyed the summons. They did not know what had occurred, and probably
thought that their best hope of safety lay in compliance. Cæparius was
also sent for, but he for the moment escaped--in vain; for before two
days were over he had been taken and put to death with the others.
Cicero again called the Senate together, and entered the meeting leading
the guilty Prætor by the hand. Here the offenders were examined and
practically acknowledged their guilt. The proofs against them were so
convincing that they could not deny it. There were the signatures of
some; arms were found hidden in the house of another. The Senate decreed
that the men should be kept in durance till some decision as to their
fate should have been pronounced. Each of them was then given in custody
to some noble Roman of the day. Lentulus the Prætor was confided to the
keeping of a Censor, Cethegus to Cornificius, Statilius to Cæsar,
Gabinius to Crassus, and Cæparius, who had not fled very far before he
was taken, to one Terentius. We can imagine how willingly would Crassus
and Cæsar have let their men go, had they dared. But Cicero was in the
ascendant. Cæsar, whom we can imagine to have understood that the hour
had not yet come for putting an end to the effete Republic, and to have
perceived also that Catiline was no fit helpmate for him in such a work,
must bide his time, and for the moment obey. That he was inclined to
favor the conspirators there is no doubt; but at present he could
befriend them only in accordance with the law. The Allobroges were
rewarded. The Prætors in the city who had assisted Cicero were thanked.
To Cicero himself a supplication was decreed. A supplication was, in its
origin, a thanksgiving to the gods on account of a victory, but had come
to be an honor shown to the General who had gained the victory. In this
case it was simply a means of adding glory to Cicero, and was peculiar,
as hitherto the reward had only been conferred for military
service.[205] Remembering that, we can understand what at the time must
have been the feeling in Rome as to the benefits conferred by the
activity and patriotism of the Consul.
On the evening of the same day, the 3d of December, Cicero again
addressed the people, explaining to them what he had done, and what he
had before explained in the Senate. This was the third Catiline speech,
and for rapid narrative is perhaps surpassed by nothing that he ever
spoke. He explains again the motives by which he had been actuated; and
in doing so extols the courage, the sagacity, the activity of Catiline,
while he ridicules the folly and the fury of the others.[206] Had
Catiline remained, he says, we should have been forced to fight with him
here in the city; but with Lentulus the sleepy, and Cassius the fat, and
Cethegus the mad, it has been comparatively easy to deal. It was on this
account that he had got rid of him, knowing that their presence would do
no harm. Then he reminds the people of all that the gods have done for
them, and addresses them in language which makes one feel that they did
believe in their gods. It is one instance, one out of many which history
and experience afford us, in which an honest and a good man has
endeavored to use for salutary purposes a faith in which he has not
himself participated. Does the bishop of to-day, when he calls upon his
clergy to pray for fine weather, believe that the Almighty will change
the ordained seasons, and cause his causes to be inoperative because
farmers are anxious for their hay or for their wheat? But he feels that
when men are in trouble it is well that they should hold communion with
the powers of heaven. So much also Cicero believed, and therefore spoke
as he did on this occasion. As to his own religious views, I shall say
something in a future chapter.
Then in a passage most beautiful for its language, though it is hardly
in accordance with our idea of the manner in which a man should speak of
himself, he explains his own ambition: "For all which, my
fellow-countrymen, I ask for no other recompense, no ornament or honor,
no monument but that this day may live in your memories. It is within
your breasts that I would garner and keep fresh my triumph, my glory,
the trophies of my exploits. No silent, voiceless statue, nothing which
can be bestowed upon the worthless, can give me delight. Only by your
remembrance can my fortunes be nurtured--by your good words, by the
records which you shall cause to be written, can they be strengthened
and perpetuated. I do think that this day, the memory of which, I trust,
may be eternal, will be famous in history because the city has been
preserved, and because my Consulship has been glorious."[207] He ends
the paragraph by an allusion to Pompey, admitting Pompey to a
brotherhood of patriotism and praise. We shall see how Pompey repaid
him.
How many things must have been astir in his mind when he spoke those
words of Pompey! In the next sentence he tells the people of his own
danger. He has taken care of their safety; it is for them to take care
of his.[208] But they, these Quirites, these Roman citizens, these
masters of the world, by whom everything was supposed to be governed,
could take care of no one; certainly not of themselves, as certainly not
of another. They could only vote, now this way and now that, as somebody
might tell them, or more probably as somebody might pay them. Pompey was
coming home, and would soon be the favorite. Cicero must have felt that
he had deserved much of Pompey, but was by no means sure that the debt
of gratitude would be paid.
Now we come to the fourth or last Catiline oration, which was made to
the Senate, convened on the 5th of December with the purpose of deciding
the fate of the leading conspirators who were held in custody. We learn
to what purport were three of the speeches made during this
debate--those of Cæsar and of Cato and of Cicero. The first two are
given to us by Sallust, but we can hardly think that we have the exact
words. The Cæsarean spirit which induced Sallust to ignore altogether
the words of Cicero would have induced him to give his own
representation of the other two, even though we were to suppose that he
had been able to have them taken down by short-hand writers--Cicero's
words, we have no doubt, with such polishing as may have been added to
the short-hand writers' notes by Tiro, his slave and secretary. The
three are compatible each with the other, and we are entitled to believe
that we know the line of argument used by the three orators.
Silanus, one of the Consuls elect, began the debate by counselling
death. We may take it for granted that he had been persuaded by Cicero
to make this proposition. During the discussion he trembled at the
consequences, and declared himself for an adjournment of their decision
till they should have dealt with Catiline. Murena, the other Consul
elect, and Catulus, the Prince of the Senate,[209] spoke for death.
Tiberius Nero, grandfather of Tiberius the Emperor, made that
proposition for adjournment to which Silanus gave way. Then--or I should
rather say in the course of the debate, for we do not know who else may
have spoken--Cæsar got up and made his proposition. His purpose was to
save the victims, but he knew well that, with such a spirit abroad as
that existing in the Senate and the city, he could only do so not by
absolving but by condemning. Wicked as these men might be, abominably
wicked it was, he said, for the Senate to think of their own dignity
rather than of the enormity of the crime. As they could not, he
suggested, invent any new punishment adequate to so abominable a crime,
it would be better that they should leave the conspirators to be dealt
with by the ordinary laws. It was thus that, cunningly, he threw out the
idea that as Senators they had no power of death. He did not dare to
tell them directly that any danger would menace them, but he exposed the
danger skilfully before their eyes. "Their crimes," he says again,
"deserve worse than any torture you can inflict. But men generally
recollect what comes last. When the punishment is severe, men will
remember the severity rather than the crime." He argues all this
extremely well. The speech is one of great ingenuity, whether the words
be the words of Sallust or of Cæsar. We may doubt, indeed, whether the
general assertion he made as to death had much weight with the Senators
when he told them that death to the wicked was a relief, whereas life
was a lasting punishment; but when he went on to remind them of the Lex
Porcia, by which the power of punishing a Roman citizen, even under the
laws, was limited to banishment, unless by a plebiscite of the people
generally ordering death, then he was efficacious. He ended by proposing
that the goods of the conspirators should be sold, and that the men
should be condemned to imprisonment for life, each in some separate
town. This would, I believe, have been quite as illegal as the
death-sentence, but it would not have been irrevocable. The Senate, or
the people, in the next year could have restored to the men their
liberty, and compensated them for their property. Cicero was determined
that the men should die. They had not obeyed him by leaving the city,
and he was convinced that while they lived the conspiracy would live
also. He fully understood the danger, and resolved to meet it. He
replied to Cæsar, and with infinite skill refrained from the expression
of any strong opinion, while he led his hearers to the conviction that
death was necessary. For himself he had been told of his danger; "but if
a man be brave in his duty death cannot be disgraceful to him; to one
who had reached the honors of the Consulship it could not be premature;
to no wise man could it be a misery." Though his brother, though his
wife, though his little boy, and his daughter just married were warning
him of his peril, not by all that would he be influenced. "Do you," he
says, "Conscript Fathers, look to the safety of the Republic. These are
not the Gracchi, nor Saturninus, who are brought to you for
judgment--men who broke the laws, indeed, and therefore suffered death,
but who still were not unpatriotic. These men had sworn to burn the
city, to slay the Senate, to force Catiline upon you as a ruler. The
proofs of this are in your own hands. It was for me, as your Consul, to
bring the facts before you. Now it is for you, at once, before night, to
decide what shall be done. The conspirators are very many; it is not
only with these few that you are dealing. On whatever you decide, decide
quickly. Cæsar tells you of the Sempronian law[210]--the law, namely,
forbidding the death of a Roman citizen--but can he be regarded as a
citizen who has been found in arms against the city?" Then there is a
fling at Cæsar's assumed clemency, showing us that Cæsar had already
endeavored to make capital out of that virtue which he displayed
afterward so signally at Alesia and Uxellodunum. Then again he speaks of
himself in words so grand that it is impossible but to sympathize with
him: "Let Scipio's name be glorious--he by whose wisdom and valor
Hannibal was forced out of Italy. Let Africanus be praised loudly, who
destroyed Carthage and Numantia, the two cities which were most hostile
to Rome. Let Paulus be regarded as great--he whose triumph that great
King Perses adorned. Let Marius be held in undying honor, who twice
saved Italy from foreign yoke. Let Pompey be praised above all, whose
noble deeds are as wide as the sun's course. Perhaps among them there
may be a spot, too, for me; unless, indeed, to win provinces to which we
may take ourselves in exile is more than to guard that city to which the
conquerors of provinces may return in safety." The last words of the
orator also are fine: "Therefore, Conscript Fathers, decide wisely and
without fear. Your own safety, and that of your wives and children, that
of your hearths and altars, the temples of your gods, the homes
contained in your city, your liberty, the welfare of Italy and of the
whole Republic are at stake. It is for you to decide. In me you have a
Consul who will obey your decrees, and will see that they be made to
prevail while the breath of life remains to him." Cato then spoke
advocating death, and the Senate decreed that the men should die. Cicero
himself led Lentulus down to the vaulted prison below, in which
executioners were ready for the work, and the other four men were made
to follow. A few minutes afterward, in the gleaming of the evening, when
Cicero was being led home by the applauding multitude, he was asked
after the fate of the conspirators. He answered them but by one word
"Vixerunt"--there is said to have been a superstition with the Romans as
to all mention of death--"They have lived their lives."
As to what was being done outside Rome with the army of conspirators in
Etruria, it is not necessary for the biographer of Cicero to say much.
Catiline fought, and died fighting. The conspiracy was then over. On the
31st of December Cicero retired from his office, and Catiline fell at
the battle of Pistoia on the 5th of January following, B.C. 62.
A Roman historian writing in the reign of Tiberius has thought it worth
his while to remind us that a great glory was added to Cicero's consular
year by the birth of Augustus--him who afterward became Augustus
Cæsar.[211] Had a Roman been living now, he might be excused for saying
that it was an honor to Augustus to have been born in the year of
Cicero's Consulship.