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CICERO BREAKS IT DOWN TO THE SENATE
IN ROME
Against Catiline
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Cicero.
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Cicero's Speeches against Catiline.
It follows the English translation
from
the full text Latin transcript of
Cicero's first speech against Catiline, delivered
in the Temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome - November 8, 63 BC.
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[1] When, O
Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our
patience? How long is that madness of yours
still to mock us? |
When is there to
be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours,
swaggering about as it does now? Do not the
nightly guards placed on the Palatine Hill—do
not the watches posted throughout the city—does
not the alarm of the people, and the union of
all good men—does not the precaution taken of
assembling the senate in this most defensible
place—do not the looks and countenances of this
venerable body here present, have any effect
upon you? Do you not feel that your plans are
detected? Do you not see that your conspiracy is
already arrested and rendered powerless by the
knowledge which every one here possesses of it?
What is there that you did last night, what the
night before— where is it that you were—who was
there that you summoned to meet you—what design
was there which was adopted by you, with which
you think that any one of us is unacquainted?
[2] Shame on the
age and on its principles! The senate is aware
of these things; the consul sees them; and yet
this man lives. Lives! aye, he comes even into
the senate. He takes a part in the public
deliberations; he is watching and marking down
and checking off for slaughter every individual
among us. And we, gallant men that we are, think
that we are doing our duty to the republic if we
keep out of the way of his frenzied attacks.
You ought, O Catiline, long ago to have been led
to execution by command of the consul. That
destruction which you have been long plotting
against us ought to have already fallen on your
own head.
[3] What? Did not that most illustrious man,
Publius Scipio, (*) the Pontifex Maximus, in his
capacity of a private citizen, put to death
Tiberius Gracchus, though but slightly
undermining the constitution? And shall we, who
are the consuls, tolerate Catiline, openly
desirous to destroy the whole world with fire
and slaughter? For I pass over older instances,
such as how Caius Servilius Ahala with his own
hand slew Spurius Maelius when plotting a
revolution in the state. There was—there was
once such virtue in this republic, that brave
men would repress mischievous citizens with
severer chastisement than the most bitter enemy.
For we have a resolution (**) of the senate, a
formidable and authoritative decree against you,
O Catiline; the wisdom of the republic is not at
fault, nor the dignity of this senatorial body.
We, we alone,—I say it openly, —we, the consuls,
are waiting in our duty.
(*) This was Scipio Nasica, who called on the
consul Mucius Scaevola to do his duty and save
the republic; but as he refused to put any one
to death without a trial, Scipio called on all
the citizens to follow him, and stormed the
Capitol, which Gracchus had occupied with his
party, and slew many of the partisans of
Gracchus, and Gracchus himself.
(**) This resolution was couched in the form
Videant Consules nequid respublica detrimenti
capiat; and it exempted the consuls from all
obligation to attend to the ordinary forms of
law, and invested them with absolute power over
the lives of all the citizens who were
intriguing against the republic.
[4] The senate once passed a decree that Lucius
Opimius, the consul, should take care that the
republic suffered no injury. Not one night
elapsed. There was put to death, on some mere
suspicion of disaffection, Caius Gracchus, a man
whose family had borne the most unblemished
reputation for many generations. There was slain
Marcus Fulvius, a man of consular rank, and all
his children. By a like decree of the senate the
safety of the republic was entrusted to Caius
Marius and Lucius Valerius, the consuls. Did not
the vengeance of the republic, did not execution
overtake Lucius Saturninus, a tribune of the
people, and Caius Servilius, the praetor,
without the delay of one single day? But we, for
these twenty days have been allowing the edge of
the senate's authority to grow blunt, as it
were. For we are in possession of a similar
decree of the senate, but we keep it locked up
in its parchment—buried, I may say, in the
sheath; and according to this decree you ought,
O Catiline, to be put to death this instant. You
live,—and you live, not to lay aside, but to
persist in your audacity.
I wish, O conscript fathers, to be merciful; I
wish not to appear negligent amid such danger to
the state; but I do now accuse myself of
remissness and culpable inactivity.
[5] A camp is
pitched in Italy, at the entrance of Etruria, in
hostility to the republic; the number of the
enemy increases every day; and yet the general
of that camp, the leader of those enemies, we
see within the walls—yes, and even in the
senate, —planning every day some internal injury
to the republic. 1 If, O Catiline, I should now
order you to be arrested, to be put to death, I
should, I suppose, have to fear lest all good
men should say that I had acted tardily, rather
than that any one should affirm that I acted
cruelly. But yet this, which ought to have been
done long since, I have good reason for not
doing as yet; I will put you to death, then,
when there shall be not one person possible to
be found so wicked, so abandoned, so like
yourself, as not to allow that it has been
rightly done.
[6] As long as one
person exists who can dare to defend you, yet
shall live; but you shall live as you do now,
surrounded by my many and trusty guards, so that
you shall not be able to stir one finger against
the republic: many eyes and ears shall still
observe and watch you, as they have hitherto
done, though you shall not perceive them.
[7] Do you
recollect that on the 21st of October I said in
the senate, that on a certain day, which was to
be the 27th of October, C. Manlius, the
satellite and servant of your audacity, would be
in arms? Was I mistaken, Catiline, not only in
so important, so atrocious, so incredible a
fact, but, what is much more remarkable, hi the
very day? I said also in the senate that you had
fixed the massacre of the nobles for the 28th of
October, when many chief men of the senate had
left Rome, not so much for the sake of saving
themselves as of checking your designs. Can you
deny that on that very day you were so hemmed in
by my guards and my vigilance, that you were
unable to stir one finger against the republic;
when you said that you would be content with the
flight of the rest, and the slaughter of us who
remained?
[8] What? when you
made sure that you would be able to seize
Praeneste on the first of November by a
nocturnal attack, did you not find that that
colony was fortified by my order, by my
garrison, by my watchfulness and care? You do
nothing, you plan nothing, you think of nothing
which I not only do not hear, but which I do not
see and know every particular of.
[9] O ye immortal
gods, where on earth are we? in what city are we
living? what constitution is ours? There are
here,—here in our body, O conscript fathers, in
this the most holy and dignified assembly of the
whole world, men who meditate my death, and the
death of all of us, and the destruction of this
city, and of the whole world. I, the consul see
them; I ask them their opinion about the
republic, and I do not yet attack, even by
words, those who ought to be put to death by the
sword. You were, then, O Catiline, at Lecca's
that night; you divided Italy into sections; you
settled where every one was to go; you fixed
whom you were to leave at Rome, whom you were to
take with you; you portioned out the divisions
of the city for conflagration; you undertook
that you yourself would at once leave the city,
and said that there was then only this to delay
you, that I was still alive. Two Roman knights
were found to deliver you from this anxiety, and
to promise that very night, before daybreak, to
slay me in my bed.
[10] All this I
knew almost before your meeting had broken up. I
strengthened and fortified my house with a
stronger guard; I refused admittance, when they
came, to those whom you sent in the morning to
salute me, and of whom I had foretold to many
eminent men that they would come to me at that
time.
[11] Great thanks
are due to the immortal gods, and to this very
Jupiter Stator, in whose temple we are, the most
ancient protector of thus city, that we have
already so often escaped so foul, so horrible,
and so deadly an enemy to the republic. But the
safety of the commonwealth must not be too often
allowed to be risked on one man. As long as you,
O Catiline, plotted against me while I was the
consul elect, I defended myself not with a
public guard, but by my own private diligence.
When, in the next consular comitia, you wished
to slay me when I was actually consul, and your
competitors also, in the Campus Martius, I
checked your nefarious attempt by the assistance
and resources of my own friends, without
exciting any disturbance publicly. In short, as
often as you attacked me, I by myself opposed
you, and that, too, though I saw that my ruin
was connected with great disaster to the
republic.
[12] But now you
are openly attacking the entire republic. You
are summoning to destruction and devastation the
temples of the immortal gods, the houses of the
city, the lives of all the citizens; in short,
all Italy. Wherefore, since I do not yet venture
to do that which is the best thing, and which
belongs to my office and to the discipline of
our ancestors, I will do that which is more
merciful if we regard its rigour, and more
expedient for the state. For if I order you to
be put to death, the rest of the conspirators
will still remain in the republic; if as I have
long been exhorting you, you depart, your
companions, those worthless dregs of the
republic, will be drawn off from the city too.
[13] What is the
matter, Catiline? Do you hesitate to do that
which I order you which you were already doing
of your own accord? The consul orders an enemy
to depart from the city. Do you ask me, Are you
to go into banishment? I do not order it; but,
if you consult me, I advise it.
[14] What? when
lately by the death of your former wife you had
made your house empty and ready for a new
bridal, did you not even add another incredible
wickedness to this wickedness? But I pass that
over, and willingly allow it to be buried in
silence, that so horrible a crime may not be
seen to have existed in this city, and not to
have been chastised. I pass over the ruin of
your fortune, which you know is hanging over you
against the ides of the very next month; I come
to those things which relate not to the infamy
of your private vices, not to your domestic
difficulties and baseness, but to the welfare of
the republic and to the lives and safety of us
all.
[15] Can the limit
of this life, O Catiline, can the breath of this
atmosphere be pleasant to you, when you know
that there is not one man of those here present
who is ignorant that you, on the last day of the
year, when Lepidus and Tullus were consuls,
stood in the assembly armed; that you had
prepared your hand for the slaughter of the
consuls and chief men of the state, and that no
reason or fear of yours hindered your crime and
madness, but the fortune of the republic? And I
say no more of these things, for they are not
unknown to every one. How often have you
endeavoured to slay me, both as consul elect and
as actual consul? how many shots of yours, so
aimed that they seemed impossible to be escaped,
have I avoided by some slight stooping aside,
and some dodging, as it were, of my body? You
attempt nothing, you execute nothing, you devise
nothing that call be kept hid from me at the
proper time; and yet you do not cease to attempt
and to contrive.
[16] How often
already has that dagger of yours been wrested
from your hands? how often has it slipped
through them by some chance, and dropped down?
and yet you cannot any longer do without it; and
to what sacred mysteries it is consecrated and
devoted by you I know not, that you think it
necessary to plunge it in the body of the
consul.
[17] On my honour,
if my slaves feared me as all your
fellow-citizens fear you, I should think I must
leave my house. Do not you think you should
leave the city? If I saw that I was even
undeservedly so suspected and bated by my
fellow-citizens, I would rather flee from their
sight than be gazed at by the hostile eyes of
every one. And do you, who, from the
consciousness of your wickedness, know that the
hatred of all men is just and has been long due
to you, hesitate to avoid the sight and presence
of those men whose minds and senses you offend?
If your parents feared and hated you, and if you
could by no means pacify them, you would, I
think, depart somewhere out of their sight. Now,
your country, which is the common parent of all
of us, hates and fears you, and has no other
opinion of you, than that you are meditating
parricide in her case; and will you neither feel
awe of her authority, nor deference for her
judgment, nor fear of her power?
[18] And she, O
Catiline, thus pleads with you, and after a
manner silently speaks to you:—There has now for
many years been no crime committed but by you;
no atrocity has taken place without you; you
alone unpunished and unquestioned have murdered
the citizens, have harassed and plundered the
allies; you alone have had power not only to
neglect all laws and investigations, but to
overthrow and break through them. Your former
actions, though they ought not to have been
borne, yet I did bear as well as I could; but
now that I should be wholly occupied with fear
of you alone, that at every sound I should dread
Catiline, that no design should seem possible to
be entertained against me which does not proceed
from your wickedness, this is no longer
endurable. Depart, then, and deliver me from
this fear; that, if it be a just one, I may not
be destroyed; if an imaginary one, that at least
I may at last cease to fear.
[19] If, as I have
said, your country were thus to address you,
ought she not to obtain her request, even if she
were not able to enforce it? What shall I say of
your having given yourself into custody? what of
your having said, for the sake of avoiding
suspicion, that you were willing to dwell in the
house of Marcus Lepidus? And when you were not
received by him, you dared even to come to me,
and begged me to keep you in my house; and when
you had received answer from me that I could not
possibly be safe in the same house with you,
when I considered myself in great danger as long
as we were in the same city, you came to Quintus
Metellus, the praetor, and being rejected by
him, you passed on to your associate, that most
excellent man, Marcus Marcellus, who would be, I
suppose you thought, most diligent in guarding
you, most sagacious hi suspecting you, and most
bold in punishing you; but how far can we think
that man ought to be from bonds and imprisonment
who has already judged himself deserving of
being given into custody?
[20] Since, then,
this is the case, do you hesitate, O Catiline,
if you cannot remain here with tranquillity, to
depart to some distant laud, and to trust your
life, saved from just and deserved punishment,
to flight and solitude? Make a motion, say you,
to the senate, (for that is what you demand) and
if thus body votes that you ought to go into
banishment, you say that you will obey. I will
not make such a motion, it is contrary to my
principles, and yet I will let you see what
these men think of you. Be gone from the city, O
Catiline, deliver the republic from fear; depart
into banishment, if that is the word you are
waiting for. What now, O Catiline? Do you not
perceive, do you not see the silence of these
men; they permit it, they say nothing; why wait
you for the authority of their words when you
see their wishes in their silence?
[21] But had I
said the same to this excellent young man,
Publius Sextius, or to that brave man, Marcus
Marcellus, before this time the senate would
deservedly have laid violent hands on me, consul
though I be, in this very temple. But to you,
Catiline, while they are quiet they approve,
while they permit me to speak they vote, while
they are silent they are loud and eloquent. And
not they alone, whose authority forsooth is dear
to you, though their lives are unimportant, but
the Roman knights too, those most honourable and
excellent men, and the other virtuous citizens
who are now surrounding the senate, whose
numbers you could see, whose desires you could
know, and whose voices you a few minutes ago
could hear,—yes, whose very hands and weapons I
have for some time been scarcely able to keep
off from you; but those, too, I will easily
bring to attend you to the gates if you leave
these places you have been long desiring to lay
waste.
[22] And yet, why
am I speaking? that anything may change your
purpose? that you may ever amend your life? that
you may meditate flight or think of voluntary
banishment? I wish the gods may give you such a
mind; though I see, if alarmed at my words you
bring your mind to go into banishment, what a
storm of unpopularity hangs over me, if not at
present, while the memory of your wickedness is
fresh, at all events hereafter. But it is
worthwhile to incur that, as long as that is but
a private misfortune of my own, and is
unconnected with the dangers of the republic.
But we cannot expect that you should be
concerned at your own vices, that you should
fear the penalties of the laws, or that you
should yield to the necessities of the republic,
for you are not, O Catiline, one whom either
shame can recall from infamy, or fear from
danger, or reason from madness.
[23] Wherefore, as
I have said before, go forth, and if you to make
me, your enemy as you call me, unpopular, go
straight into banishment. I shall scarcely be
able to endue all that will be said if you do
so; I shall scarcely be able to support my load
of unpopularity if you do go into banishment at
the command of the consul; but if you wish serve
my credit and reputation, go forth with your
ill-omened band of profligates; betake yourself
to Manilius, rouse up the abandoned citizens,
separate yourself from the good ones, wage war
against your country, exult in your impious
banditti, so that you may not seem to have been
driven out by me and gone to strangers, but to
have gone invited to your own friends.
[24] Though why
should I invite you, by whom I know men have
been already sent on to wait in arms for you at
the forum Aurelium; who I know has fixed and
agreed with Manlius upon a settled day; by whom
I know that that silver eagle, which I trust
will be ruinous and fatal to you and to all your
friends, and to which there was set up in your
house a shrine as it were of your crimes, has
been already sent forward. Need I fear that you
can long do without that which you used to
worship when going out to do murder, and from
whose altars you have often transferred your
impious hand to the slaughter of citizens?
[25] You will go
at last where your unbridled and mad desire has
been long hurrying you. And this causes you no
grief; but an incredible pleasure. Nature has
formed you, desire has trained you, fortune has
preserved you for this insanity. Not only did
you never desire quiet, but you never even
desired any war but a criminal one; you have
collected a baud of profligates and worthless
men, abandoned not only by all fortune but even
by hope.
[26] Then what
happiness will you enjoy with what delight will
you exult in what pleasure will you revel! when
in so numerous a body of friends, you neither
hear nor see one good man. All the toils you
have gone through have always pointed to this
sort of life; your lying on the ground not
merely to lie in wait to gratify your unclean
desires, but even to accomplish crimes; your
vigilance, not only when plotting against the
sleep of husbands, but also against the goods of
your murdered victims, have all been
preparations for this. Now you have an
opportunity of displaying your splendid
endurance of hunger, of cold, of want of
everything; by which in a short time you will
find yourself worn out.
[27] All this I
effected when I procured your rejection from the
consulship, that you should be reduced to make
attempts on your country as an exile, instead of
being able to distress it as consul, and that
that which had been wickedly undertaken by you
should be called piracy rather than war.
[28] But even
private men have often in this republic slain
mischievous citizens.—Is it the laws which have
been passed about the punishment of Roman
citizens? But in this city those who have
rebelled against the republic have never had the
rights of citizens.—Do you fear odium with
posterity? You are showing fine gratitude to the
Roman people which has raised you, a man known
only by your own actions, of no ancestral
renown, through all the degrees of honour at so
early an age to the very highest office, if from
fear of unpopularity or of any danger you
neglect the safety of your fellow-citizens.
[29] But if you
have a fear of unpopularity, is that arising
from the imputation of vigour and boldness, or
that arising from that of inactivity and
indecision most to be feared? When Italy is laid
waste by war, when cities are attacked and
houses in flames, do you not think that you will
be then consumed by a perfect conflagration of
hatred?”
[30] Though there
are some men in this body who either do not see
what threatens, or dissemble what they do see;
who have fed the hope of Catiline by mild
sentiments, and have strengthened the rising
conspiracy by not believing it; influenced by
whose authority many, and they not wicked, but
only ignorant, if I punished him would say that
I had acted cruelly and tyranically. But I know
that if he arrives at the camp of Manlius to
which he is going, there will be no one so
stupid as not to see that there has been a
conspiracy; no one so hardened as not to confess
it. But if this man alone were put to death, I
know that this disease of the republic would be
only checked for awhile, not eradicated for
ever. But if he banishes himself; and takes with
him all his friends, and collects at one point
all the ruined men from every quarter, then not
only will this full-grown plague of the republic
be extinguished and eradicated, but also the
root and seed of all future evils.
[31] We have now
for a long time, O conscript fathers, lived
among these dangers and machinations of
conspiracy; but somehow or other, the ripeness
of all wickedness, and of this long-standing
madness and audacity, has come to a head at the
time of my consulship. But if this man alone is
removed from this piratical crew, we may appear,
perhaps, for a short time relieved from fear and
anxiety, but the danger will settle down and lie
hid in the veins and bowels of the republic. As
it often happens that men afflicted with a
severe disease, when they are tortured with heat
and fever, if they drink cold water, seem at
first to be relieved, but afterwards stiffer
more and more severely; so this disease which is
in the republic, if relieved by the punishment
of this man, will only get worse and worse, as
the rest will be still alive.
[32] Wherefore, O
conscript fathers, let the worthless be
gone,—let them separate themselves from the
good,—let them collect in one place,—let them,
as I have often said before, be separated from
us by a wall; let them cease to plot against the
consul in his own house,—to surround the
tribunal of the city praetor,—to besiege the
senate-house with swords,—to prepare brands and
torches to burn the city; let it, in short, be
written on the brow of every citizen, what are
his sentiments about the republic. I promise you
this, O conscript fathers, that there shall be
so much diligence in us the consuls, much
authority in you, so much virtue in the Roman
knights, so much unanimity in all good men, that
you shall see everything made plain and manifest
by the departure of Catiline,—everything checked
and punished.
[33] With these
omens, O Catiline, be gone to your impious and
nefarious war, to the great safety of the
republic, to your own misfortune and injury, and
to the destruction of those who have joined
themselves to you in every wickedness and
atrocity. Then do you, O Jupiter, who were
consecrated by Romulus with the same auspices as
this city, whom we rightly call the stay of this
city and empire, repel this man and his
companions from your altars and from the other
temples,—from the houses and walls of the
city,—from the lives and fortunes of all the
citizens; and overwhelm all the enemies of good
men, the foes of the republic, the robbers of
Italy, men bound together by a treaty and
infamous alliance of crimes, dead and alive,
with eternal punishments.
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