Speech 4

1 CHAPTER 1

I see, senators, that every face and every eye is turned toward me. I see that you are anxious not only about your own danger and the republic’s, but also, even if that danger is driven away, about mine. Amid these evils your concern for me is a pleasure; in my grief it is welcome. But by the immortal gods, put it aside! Forget my safety and think of yourselves and your children. If the terms on which I hold this consulship require me to endure every bitterness, every pain and torment, I will endure them, not only bravely but gladly, provided that my labors secure dignity and safety for you and the Roman people.

SECTION 2

I am that consul, senators, for whom neither the Forum, where all justice has its home, nor the Campus, consecrated by the auspices taken for consular elections, nor the Senate House, the highest refuge of every nation, nor my home, the shelter open to all, nor my bed, given for rest, nor, finally, this seat of honor has ever been free from deadly danger and ambush. I have kept silent about much, endured much, yielded much, and healed many of the things that frightened you at some cost of pain to myself. Now, if the immortal gods have willed this outcome for my consulship—that I should rescue you and the Roman people from a most pitiable massacre; your wives, your children, and the Vestal Virgins from the cruelest abuse; the temples and shrines, this most beautiful homeland of us all, from the foulest flames; and all Italy from war and devastation—then let me face whatever fate is set before me alone. For if Publius Lentulus, misled by soothsayers, believed his name was destined to bring the republic to ruin, why should I not rejoice that my consulship has proved all but destined to save the Roman people?

3 CHAPTER 2

Therefore, senators, take counsel for yourselves, look ahead for your country, preserve yourselves, your wives, your children, and your fortunes; defend the name and safety of the Roman people. Stop sparing me and thinking of me. First, I ought to hope that all the gods who watch over this city will reward me as I deserve. Then, if anything should befall me, I will die with a calm and ready spirit. For death cannot be dishonorable for a brave man, or premature for a man who has been consul, or wretched for a wise man. Yet I am not made of iron: I cannot be unmoved by the grief of my beloved and loving brother here, or by the tears of all these men you see surrounding me. My thoughts are often called home by my wife, beside herself with fear, my daughter, prostrate with terror, and my little son, whom the republic seems to me to hold in its arms as a pledge of my consulship; and also by my son-in-law, standing before my eyes as he awaits the outcome of this day. All this moves me—but toward securing their safety along with yours, even if some violence overwhelms me, rather than letting them and us perish together in the republic’s ruin.

SECTION 4

Therefore, senators, bend all your strength toward saving the republic. Look around you at every storm that hangs over us unless you act in time. It is not Tiberius Gracchus, because he wanted to become tribune of the people a second time; not Gaius Gracchus, because he tried to stir up the supporters of land reform; not Lucius Saturninus, because he killed Gaius Memmius, who is now brought into peril and before your stern judgment. We hold the men who stayed in Rome to burn the city, to massacre you all, to welcome Catiline. We hold their letters, their seals, their handwriting, and finally the confession of each and every one. The Allobroges are being solicited; the slaves are being roused; Catiline is being summoned. This is the plan they have undertaken: to kill everyone, leaving not a soul even to mourn the name of the Roman people and lament the calamity of so great an empire.

5 CHAPTER 3

Informers have reported all this; the accused have confessed it; and you have already pronounced your judgment in many decisions. First you thanked me in extraordinary terms and decreed that my courage and vigilance had exposed the conspiracy of desperate men. Next you compelled Publius Lentulus to resign his praetorship. Then you voted that he and the others on whom you had passed judgment should be placed in custody. Most significantly, you decreed a public thanksgiving in my name, an honor granted to no civilian before me. Finally, yesterday you bestowed the most generous rewards on the envoys of the Allobroges and on Titus Volturcius. All these measures make it clear, beyond any doubt, that you have condemned the men you expressly named for detention.

SECTION 6

Yet I have resolved, senators, to lay the matter before you as though it were still untouched: both your judgment on the deed and your decision on the punishment. I will first say what it is a consul’s duty to say. I had long seen a great madness at work in the republic, with strange new evils being stirred and set in motion. But I never imagined that citizens were conducting a conspiracy so vast and so destructive. Now, whatever the truth, wherever your minds and your votes incline, you must reach a decision before nightfall. You see the enormity of the crime brought before you. If you think that only a few are implicated, you are gravely mistaken. This evil has spread more widely than anyone supposes. It has flowed not only through Italy but across the Alps, and, creeping unseen, has already seized many provinces. There is no way to suppress it by delay and postponement. Whatever course you choose, you must punish it swiftly.

7 CHAPTER 4

So far I see two proposals: one from Decimus Silanus, who holds that those who tried to destroy all this must be punished with death; the other from Gaius Caesar, who rejects the death penalty but embraces every severity of the other punishments. Each, as befits his own standing and the gravity of the situation, takes a position of the utmost sternness. The first believes that those who tried to rob us all, and the Roman people, of life, to destroy our empire and extinguish the very name of the Roman people, should not enjoy life and the air we share for a single instant. He recalls that this kind of punishment has often been used in our republic against wicked citizens. The other understands that the immortal gods did not establish death as a punishment: it is either a necessity of nature or a rest from toil and misery. That is why the wise have never met it unwillingly, and the brave have often met it gladly. Imprisonment, however—and lifelong imprisonment at that—was surely devised as an exceptional punishment for unspeakable crime. He directs that the prisoners be distributed among the municipal towns. That measure seems unjust if you mean to command them, and difficult if you mean to ask.

SECTION 8

Still, decree it, if you wish. I will undertake the task, and I hope to find men who will not think it consistent with their dignity to refuse what you have resolved upon for everyone’s safety. He adds a heavy penalty for the towns if any of the prisoners escapes his chains. He surrounds them with dreadful safeguards worthy of these desperate men’s crime. He makes it law that no one may lighten the punishment of those he condemns, whether through the Senate or through the people. He takes away even hope, the one thing that usually consoles people in misery. He also orders their property confiscated. To these criminals he leaves life alone. Had he taken that away, in a single pang he would have spared them many miseries of mind and body and every punishment for their crimes. That is why the ancients, to set some terror before the wicked during life, maintained that certain punishments of this kind had been established for the impious in the world below. They plainly understood that, once these were removed, death itself was nothing to dread.

9 CHAPTER 5

Now, senators, I see where my own interest lies. If you follow Gaius Caesar’s proposal, since he has taken the political path regarded as the people’s cause, perhaps, with him as this proposal’s author and guarantor, I shall have less to fear from attacks made in the people’s name. If you follow the other proposal, I suspect I may be drawing more trouble upon myself. Yet let the republic’s advantage outweigh calculations of my own dangers. For Caesar has given us, as his own dignity and his ancestors’ greatness demanded, a proposal that stands as a pledge of his lasting devotion to the republic. The difference has become clear between the irresponsibility of demagogues and a truly popular spirit, intent on the people’s safety.

SECTION 10

I see that one of those who wish to be thought champions of the people is absent—so as not, of course, to pronounce on the lives of Roman citizens. Yet two days ago he consigned Roman citizens to custody, decreed a thanksgiving in my honor, and yesterday bestowed the greatest rewards on the informers. Surely no one can doubt what judgment a man has passed on the entire affair and the case when he has decreed detention for the accused, congratulations for the investigator, and a reward for the informer. Gaius Caesar, however, understands that the Sempronian law was established for Roman citizens, and that an enemy of the republic cannot possibly be a citizen; finally, that the very man who proposed the Sempronian law paid the penalty to the republic by order of the people. Nor does he think that Lentulus himself, lavish in gifts and prodigal in spending, can even be called a champion of the people after plotting so savagely and cruelly to destroy the Roman people and bring this city to ruin. And so this mildest and gentlest of men does not hesitate to consign Publius Lentulus to perpetual darkness and chains. He provides for the future that no one may parade himself by lightening this man’s punishment, or ever again win popular favor by destroying the Roman people. He adds confiscation of their property, so that poverty and beggary of the body may follow every torment of the mind.

11 CHAPTER 6

Therefore, if you adopt this proposal, you will have given me a companion, dear and welcome to the people, when I address their assembly. If you prefer to follow Silanus’s proposal, the Roman people will readily acquit you and me of the charge of cruelty, and I shall establish that his proposal was much the more merciful. Indeed, senators, what cruelty can there be in punishing so monstrous a crime? I judge by my own feelings. As I hope to enjoy with you the safety of the republic, the force I bring to this case springs not from a savage temper—for who is milder than I?—but from an extraordinary humanity and compassion. For I seem to see this city, the light of the world and the stronghold of all nations, suddenly falling in a single conflagration. In my mind I see the pitiful, unburied heaps of citizens in their buried homeland. Before my eyes passes the sight of Cethegus, his frenzy reveling in your slaughter.

SECTION 12

When I picture Lentulus ruling as king, as he himself confessed he had hoped the prophecies promised him, Gabinius as his purple-robed courtier, and Catiline arriving with his army, then I shudder at the wailing of mothers, the flight of girls and boys, and the abuse of the Vestal Virgins. Precisely because these things seem to me so pitiful and so deserving of pity, I will show myself stern and forceful toward those who meant to carry them out. For consider: if a father, after his children had been murdered by a slave, his wife killed, and his house burned, failed to exact the harshest punishment from the slaves, would he seem merciful and compassionate, or utterly inhuman and cruel? To me he would seem heartless and made of iron if he did not soothe his own pain and torment with the pain and torment of the guilty. So it is with us and these men who wished to butcher us, our wives, and our children; who tried to destroy each man’s separate home and this common home of the republic; who worked to settle the nation of the Allobroges on the site of this city and in the ashes of our burned-out empire. If we show the utmost force against them, we shall be thought compassionate. But if we choose to be more lenient, we must bear a reputation for the utmost cruelty in the destruction of our country and its citizens.

SECTION 13

Unless, indeed, someone thought Lucius Caesar, a man of the greatest courage and devotion to the republic, too cruel two days ago, when he declared that his sister’s husband—she is a most excellent woman—must be put to death, with the man himself present and listening; when he said that his own grandfather had been killed by order of the consul, and that his grandfather’s young son, not yet of age, sent by his father as an envoy, had been killed in prison. What had those men done to compare with this? What plan had they undertaken to destroy the republic? At that time a desire for lavish distributions and a certain factional rivalry were at work in the state. And at that time this Lentulus’s grandfather, a most distinguished man, took up arms and pursued Gracchus. He even suffered a serious wound then, to prevent any loss to the republic’s supreme authority. This man, to overturn the republic’s foundations, summons the Gauls, rouses the slaves, calls in Catiline, assigns us to Cethegus for slaughter and the other citizens to Gabinius for murder, the city to Cassius for burning, and all Italy to Catiline for devastation and plunder. I suggest you need have little fear of seeming to have decreed something too stern for so monstrous and unspeakable a crime. We have far more reason to fear being thought cruel to our country through leniency in punishment than excessively harsh toward our bitterest enemies through severity in exacting it.

14 CHAPTER 7

But I cannot ignore what I hear, senators. Remarks are being thrown about and reaching my ears from men who seem afraid that I lack sufficient forces to carry out what you decide today. Everything has been foreseen, prepared, and arranged, senators, thanks both to my utmost care and vigilance and, still more, to the Roman people’s determination to retain their sovereign power and preserve the fortunes of us all. They are all here: men of every order, every kind, and, indeed, every age. The Forum is full, the temples around the Forum are full, every entrance to this temple and this place is full. For this is the only cause found since the city’s founding on which everyone has felt one and the same, except those who, seeing that they must perish, preferred to perish with everyone rather than alone.

SECTION 15

These men I gladly exclude and set apart. They should be counted, I think, not as wicked citizens but as our bitterest enemies. But the rest—immortal gods! In what numbers, with what zeal, with what courage they unite for our common safety and dignity! Why should I mention here the Roman knights? They acknowledge your supremacy in rank and counsel, yet compete with you in love of the republic. Recalled from many years of discord with this order to partnership and harmony, they are bound to you by this day and this cause. If we keep forever in the republic this union established during my consulship, I assure you that no civil and domestic evil will ever again come upon any part of the republic. I see the treasury tribunes, men of the greatest courage, assembled with equal zeal to defend the republic. So too all the clerks: chance brought them in crowds to the treasury today, and I see that they have turned from awaiting their allotment by lot to our common safety.

SECTION 16

The whole multitude of the freeborn is here, even the poorest. Who does not hold these temples, the sight of the city, the possession of liberty, this very light, and the shared soil of our homeland not only dear but sweet and welcome?

Chapter 8

It is worth your attention, senators, to learn the devotion of the freedmen. Having attained the standing of citizens by their own merit, they truly judge this to be their homeland, which some men born here—and born to the highest rank—have judged not their homeland but a city of enemies. But why do I speak of these orders and these men, whom their private fortunes, the common republic, and finally liberty, the sweetest thing of all, have roused to defend their country’s safety? There is not a slave, provided his condition of slavery is bearable, who does not shudder at the recklessness of these citizens, who does not wish our institutions to stand, who does not contribute as much goodwill to our safety as he dares and can.

17 So if any of you are troubled by the report that a certain procurer in Lentulus’s service is running about the shops, hoping to buy the allegiance of the needy and the ignorant, the attempt was indeed begun and made. But no one has been found so wretched in his circumstances or so corrupt in his desires that he does not wish to preserve that very place where he sits and works and earns his daily living, his sleeping corner and little bed, and, in short, the peaceful course of his life. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of those who work in shops—or rather, for this is the truer statement, this entire class—are deeply devoted to peace. Every tool of trade, every business and livelihood depends on a busy citizenry and flourishes in quiet times. If their earnings commonly fall when their shops are shut, what would have happened when they were burned?

18 Since this is so, senators, you do not lack the Roman people’s support. Take care that you do not seem to fail the Roman people.

Chapter 9

You have a consul preserved through countless dangers and plots, and from the very midst of death, not for his own life but for your safety. Every order is united in thought, will, and voice to preserve the republic. Beset by the torches and weapons of an impious conspiracy, our common country stretches pleading hands toward you. To you she entrusts herself, to you the life of every citizen, to you the citadel and Capitol, to you the altars of the household gods, to you Vesta’s everlasting fire, to you the temples and shrines of every god, to you the city’s walls and roofs. And today you must judge the fate of your own lives, of your wives’ and children’s lives, of everyone’s possessions, of your homes and hearths.

19 You have a leader mindful of you and forgetful of himself, an opportunity not always granted. You have every order, every man, the whole Roman people, thinking one and the same thought—a sight we see today for the first time in a question of domestic politics. Consider how nearly a single night destroyed an empire founded with such toil, liberty established with such courage, and fortunes raised and enlarged by such divine generosity. Today you must ensure that citizens can never again not merely accomplish such a thing, but even conceive it. I have said this not to stir you, whose zeal almost outruns my own, but so that my voice, which ought to take the lead in the republic, may be seen to have fulfilled a consul’s duty.

20 CHAPTER 10

Now, before I return to the question before us, I will say a few words about myself. I see that I have taken upon myself as many enemies as there are conspirators—and you see how vast their band is. Yet I judge them base, weak, and contemptible. Even if, one day, that band, roused by someone’s madness and crime, proves stronger than your authority and the republic’s, I will never regret my actions and decisions, senators. The death with which they may threaten me awaits us all. But no one has won such praise in life as you have bestowed on me by your decrees: for others you have always decreed thanksgiving for serving the republic well; for me alone, for saving it.

21 Let that Scipio be renowned whose wisdom and courage forced Hannibal to return to Africa and leave Italy. Let the other Africanus be adorned with surpassing praise, who destroyed Carthage and Numantia, the two cities most hostile to this empire. Let that Paulus be held an outstanding man, whose chariot was graced by Perseus, once a king of the greatest power and nobility. Let Marius have eternal glory, who twice freed Italy from siege and the fear of enslavement. Let Pompey stand above them all, whose achievements and virtues extend to the same regions and boundaries as the sun’s course. Surely among their honors there will be some room for my glory—unless opening provinces for us to go out into is greater than ensuring that even those who are away have somewhere to return as victors.

22 Yet in one respect victory abroad enjoys a better position than victory at home. Foreign enemies, once subdued, serve us; if received into friendship, they consider themselves bound by our kindness. But citizens who, corrupted by some madness, have once become enemies of their country can neither be restrained by force nor reconciled by kindness, even after you have driven them back from the destruction of the republic. I see, therefore, that I have taken up an everlasting war against depraved citizens. I trust that, with your help and that of all good men, and with the memory of these great dangers—which will live forever not only among the people who have been saved but in the speech and minds of all nations—I can readily keep that war from myself and my family. Surely no force will ever be found so great that it can shatter and undermine your union with the Roman knights and this mighty concord of all good men.

23 CHAPTER 11

Since this is so, in place of the command, the army, and the province I have forgone; in place of a triumph and the other distinctions I have rejected to watch over the city and your safety; in place of provincial clients and ties of hospitality, which, even with my influence here in Rome, cost no less labor to maintain than to acquire—in place of all these things, then, in return for my singular devotion to you and this care for the preservation of the republic that you see before you, I ask nothing but the memory of this hour and of my entire consulship. As long as that memory remains fixed in your minds, I will consider myself enclosed within the safest wall. But if the violence of wicked men defeats and overcomes my hope, I entrust my little son to you. Surely he will have protection enough, not only for his safety but for his standing, if you remember that he is the son of the man who preserved all this at his own peril alone.

24 Therefore, on your own ultimate safety and that of the Roman people, on your wives and children, on your altars and hearths, on your sanctuaries and temples, on the roofs and homes of the entire city, on empire and liberty, on Italy’s safety, on the whole republic, decide with the care you have shown from the beginning, and with courage. You have a consul who will not hesitate to obey your decrees and who, for as long as he lives, can defend what you resolve and answer for its execution himself.

1 CHAPTER 1

Senators, I can see you all looking at me, your faces and eyes turned my way. Your worries concern not just yourselves and the state. Even if that danger passes, you are worried about what may happen to me. Your good will gives me pleasure in trouble and comfort in suffering. But I beg you, by the gods who never die, to stop worrying about that. Put my survival out of your thoughts. Think instead about yourselves and your children. If being consul means that I must face every bitter experience, every suffering and torture, I will face them. I will do so gladly as well as courageously, so long as my work brings security and a position of honor to you and to Rome’s people.

2 I am a consul, senators, who has never been safe from deadly plots anywhere. Not in the Forum, the home of justice. Not on the Campus, made sacred by the taking of omens for consular elections. Not in the Senate House, the ultimate place of help for every nation. Not in my own house, the refuge everyone normally has, or in my bed, meant for sleep. Not even here in the seat that honors my office. I have said nothing about much of this. I have put up with much and made many concessions. When you were frightened, I put many things right by accepting suffering myself. Suppose, then, that the gods intended this as the outcome of my time as consul: that I would save you and Rome’s people from a dreadful slaughter; save your wives, children and the Vestal Virgins from the worst mistreatment; save the temples, shrines and this beautiful country we all belong to from a loathsome fire; save the whole of Italy from warfare and destruction. If so, let me undergo whatever fate awaits me personally. Prophets persuaded Publius Lentulus that his name marked him out to destroy the state. Why, then, should I not welcome the thought that my consulship has proved almost marked out by fate to save the Roman people?

3 CHAPTER 2

Senators, your business is to protect yourselves and plan for your country’s future. Preserve your lives, your families and your possessions. Uphold the Roman people’s good name and security. Give up trying to spare me. Stop making me your concern. For one thing, I ought to expect the gods who protect this city to repay me as my conduct deserves. For another, if something does happen, I will be ready to die without losing my composure. A courageous man cannot die disgracefully. Someone who has attained the consulship cannot die before his time, nor can a wise man die unhappily. I am not, however, a man without feelings. The sorrow of my dear, devoted brother standing here affects me, as do the tears of all the men you see gathered around my seat. Again and again my mind goes home to my wife, out of her senses with fear, and my daughter, overcome by it. I think of my small son: it seems to me that the state holds him close as a guarantee of my consulship. I also think of my son-in-law, there in front of me, waiting for the day’s outcome. All of them affect me. But the effect is to make me want them all to survive with you, even at the cost of my being struck down, rather than have them and us destroyed together when the state falls.

4 So put your strength behind the state’s survival, senators. Consider all the storms ahead if you do not take care now. This is no case of Tiberius Gracchus facing danger and your severe judgment for seeking another term as tribune. Nor of Gaius Gracchus for trying to mobilize the land-reform party. Nor of Lucius Saturninus for murdering Gaius Memmius. The prisoners in our hands stayed in Rome so that they could set it on fire, murder every senator and receive Catiline. We have the letters, the seal impressions and the writing itself. We even have a confession from each man. Approaches are being made to the Allobroges; slaves are being incited; a summons is going out to Catiline. Their plan, in short, is to kill everybody. No survivor is to remain even to grieve for the name of the Roman people or lament the destruction of this great empire.

5 CHAPTER 3

We learned all this from the witnesses, and the defendants admitted it. Your own decisions have already settled the matter repeatedly. First came your exceptionally warm thanks to me and your formal declaration that my courage and attention had uncovered the conspiracy of these desperate men. Then you required Publius Lentulus to give up his office as praetor. After that you ordered his detention, along with the others whose conduct you had judged. Above all, you voted to hold a thanksgiving on my behalf. No one wearing civilian dress had been honored that way before me. Finally, only yesterday you granted substantial rewards to the Allobroges’ representatives and Titus Volturcius. Taken together, these actions leave no doubt: you have passed judgment against the individuals you specifically ordered into custody.

6 Even so, senators, I decided to submit both issues to you as though nothing had yet been settled: what you think of the crime, and what punishment you recommend. I will say first what my office requires. For a long time I could see a great madness spreading in public life, with unfamiliar troubles being stirred together and set in motion. But I never imagined citizens were organizing anything as vast and deadly as this conspiracy. Whatever the facts, and whichever way your thoughts and votes turn, you have to settle it before dark. You can see the scale of the crime reported to you. You are very wrong if you think only a handful are connected with it. This evil has spread farther than people realize. It has traveled throughout Italy, crossed the Alps as well, and quietly worked its way into many provinces already. You will never put it down by holding back and postponing action. Choose whatever method you wish, but punish it without delay.

7 CHAPTER 4

At present there are two opinions before us. Decimus Silanus proposes death for the men who attempted to destroy everything here. Gaius Caesar excludes execution but accepts the harshest aspects of every other punishment. Both men are taking the strictest possible position, appropriate to their standing and the seriousness of events. Silanus thinks these men should not be allowed another instant alive, breathing the air that everyone shares. They tried to take life from every one of us and from Rome’s people, abolish our power and wipe out our very name. He remembers repeated occasions when the state has used this penalty on criminal citizens. Caesar’s understanding is different. In his view the immortal gods provided death not to punish us but as something nature makes inevitable, or as relief from suffering and hardship. That explains why wise men have always accepted it willingly, and brave men have often positively welcomed it. Confinement, on the other hand, especially confinement for the rest of one’s life, was surely devised to punish an exceptionally wicked crime. Caesar wants the prisoners divided up among the municipalities. Ordering the towns to do this seems unfair; asking them seems difficult.

8 Vote for it nonetheless, if you think fit. I will take the task on, and I hope to find people who regard refusal, not compliance, as beneath their dignity when everyone’s safety is at stake. Caesar would impose a serious penalty on a town if one of its prisoners broke free. He would put frightening restrictions around the prisoners, suited to the wickedness of desperate men. He stipulates that nobody, whether acting through a vote of the senators or of the people, may make the condemned men’s punishment lighter. He removes even their hope, ordinarily the last comfort that misery leaves a person. Their possessions, too, are to become public property. These criminals would keep only their lives. To take life away instead would, through one painful moment, release them from numerous mental and bodily sufferings and all the consequences of their crimes. That is why people in ancient times wanted there to be certain punishments of this sort for the wicked after death: they wanted wrongdoing to face some prospect of terror during life. Evidently they understood that death itself was nothing to be scared of if those punishments were taken away.

9 CHAPTER 5

I understand my own stake in this, senators. Caesar has chosen the political course regarded as supporting the people. If you accept his recommendation, having him put forward and vouch for it may mean fewer popular attacks for me to fear. Choosing the alternative may, I suspect, make more trouble for me. But whatever danger I calculate for myself must give way to the public interest. In Caesar’s recommendation we have, as we should expect from his standing and his family’s greatness, a guarantee of continuing loyalty to the state. We can now distinguish the irresponsible behavior of platform speakers from a mind genuinely devoted to the people and their survival.

10 One man who wants a reputation as a people’s champion is, I notice, absent. Presumably he wishes to avoid giving an opinion in a capital case involving Roman citizens. Yet two days ago he ordered Roman citizens to be held, voted a thanksgiving for me, and yesterday gave the witnesses exceptionally large rewards. When someone votes to detain the defendant, congratulate the investigator and reward the witness, surely his judgment on the entire affair and the case is beyond doubt. Caesar recognizes, however, that the Sempronian law was made to protect Roman citizens. Anyone who becomes an enemy of the state cannot remain a citizen at all. Even the author of that law, he recognizes, paid the penalty to the state on the people’s orders. Nor does Caesar regard lavish, spendthrift Lentulus as eligible even for the title of people’s champion, after his savage and merciless planning against Rome’s people and against the city’s existence. Although an extremely gentle and mild man, he has no hesitation in putting Publius Lentulus in darkness and confinement forever. He also makes a rule for the future: nobody may boast of easing this prisoner’s sentence and later pose as a popular leader by ruining the people of Rome. Confiscation comes too, so that bodily destitution and begging will follow all their mental suffering.

11 CHAPTER 6

If this is your decision, then, you will give me someone the people are fond of and happy to hear as a companion when I address them. If you favor Silanus instead, the people will readily absolve both you and me from blame for cruelty. I will make good the argument that his course was far gentler. Really, senators, where is the cruelty in punishing a crime of such enormous wickedness? My own feelings guide my judgment. As truly as I hope to share a safe republic with you, my forcefulness here comes not from a taste for brutality—who is gentler than I am?—but from an exceptional feeling for human beings and their suffering. In my mind’s eye the city, which gives light to the world and stands as the stronghold of every nation, suddenly collapses in one great blaze. I see miserable piles of dead citizens left without burial in a homeland itself buried. Cethegus’s face and his mad delight in murdering you keep appearing before me.

12 Then I imagine Lentulus on the throne: he confessed himself that this was what the prophecies had led him to expect. I imagine Gabinius beside him as his courtier in purple and Catiline arriving at the head of troops. I shudder at the cries of married women, at boys and girls running away, at the outrage inflicted on Vesta’s virgins. Because I find all this so deeply wretched and deserving of pity, I will be severe and forceful against those who wanted to do it. Consider a head of household whose slave had killed his children, whose wife had been murdered and whose house had been set alight. If he failed to punish the slaves with the greatest severity, would we call him kind and compassionate, or utterly cruel and inhuman? I would call him hard and heartless if he did not relieve his own torment and grief by making the guilty suffer and feel pain. Our position is the same. These men intended the slaughter of our families and ourselves. They tried to wipe out every individual home and the home the whole state shares. They meant to establish the Allobroges as a nation where our city now stands, amid the ashes of our empire after its burning. Acting against them with the greatest determination will earn us the name of compassionate men. Choosing a softer course will mean being known for the worst cruelty as country and citizens are destroyed.

13 Unless, perhaps, someone found Lucius Caesar too cruel two days ago? He is exceptionally brave and devoted to the republic. His sister is an excellent woman, yet he said that her husband should lose his life, while that husband stood there listening. He recalled how a consul had ordered his grandfather’s death, and how the grandfather’s son, not yet an adult and sent by his father as an envoy, was killed in jail. Had those men done anything like this? Had they formed a plan to demolish the state? There was then a movement for distributions of public gifts, together with a certain struggle between political factions. In those days Lentulus’s grandfather, a man of great distinction, took up weapons in pursuit of Gracchus. He even received a serious injury to keep the state’s power from being reduced in any way. His grandson, by contrast, is calling in Gauls and inciting slaves and summoning Catiline in order to overturn the state’s foundations. Cethegus is assigned the senators’ murder, Gabinius the killing of the remaining citizens, Cassius the burning of Rome, and Catiline the devastation and plundering of Italy as a whole. I advise you to be less afraid of seeming overly severe in deciding about such an immense and wicked crime. Being thought cruel to our country because we reduced the punishment is a much greater danger than being thought overly harsh to our deadliest enemies because we punished them strictly.

14 CHAPTER 7

Senators, I cannot conceal what I am hearing. People have been making remarks that have reached me. They seem concerned that I will not have sufficient support to implement today’s decisions. Everything has been anticipated, readied and arranged. My extreme care and attention have contributed, senators, but a far greater contribution has come from the people’s determination to hold on to supreme power and preserve the possessions we all share. Every social order is represented here, every sort of person and indeed every age. Crowds fill the Forum, the surrounding temples and every approach to the temple where we are meeting. Since Rome’s foundation there has never been another cause on which everybody held exactly the same view. The exceptions are those who, realizing their own destruction was coming, chose to perish with all the rest rather than by themselves.

15 I gladly leave those people out and put them in a class apart. I would count them among our fiercest enemies, not among our bad citizens. But the others! By the immortal gods, what numbers, what commitment, what courage they bring to their common purpose of security and honor! Why speak here about Rome’s knights? They concede your order’s first place in standing and deliberation, while challenging you to match their devotion to the state. After years of disagreement with this order, they have returned to agreement and partnership. Today’s cause and today’s gathering bind you together. Keep this union, strengthened in my term as consul, permanently alive in public life, and I assure you that no further civil or internal evil will ever threaten any part of the state. Equally eager to defend it, I see the very courageous treasury tribunes assembled here. All the clerks have come as well. This happened to be a day that brought large numbers of them to the treasury, and I see them turn from waiting for lots to be drawn to the question of our common survival.

16 The freeborn have turned out in full, including people with very little. Can anyone fail to love these temples, the view of Rome, the freedom they possess, the very daylight and the ground their countrymen share? Can anyone fail to find these things delightful and precious?

Chapter 8

The freedmen’s commitment deserves your attention, senators. They earned their place as citizens by their own qualities, and genuinely think of this as their homeland. Some people born here, into the very highest families, have instead treated it as the home of their enemies, not their own country. Yet why list these orders and these people? Concern for their possessions, for the state they hold in common, and above all for freedom, which is sweetest of all, has moved them to protect their country. Even slaves, as long as life in slavery is reasonably bearable, all recoil from the recklessness of these citizens. They want what we have to remain standing. Each puts as much of his good will behind its preservation as he is able and dares to give.

17 Perhaps you are worried by something you have heard: a pimp employed by Lentulus has been dashing from shop to shop, expecting money to win over needy, uneducated people. An effort of that kind was indeed started and tried. But nobody has turned out to be so poor in circumstances or so hopeless in intentions that he does not want to keep safe the very spot where he sits to work and make his daily income. He wants his sleeping corner, his small bed and, in short, his peaceful pattern of living preserved. Far and away most shopkeepers—or, to put it more accurately, all of this class—are passionate supporters of peace. Their tools, their labor and their income rely on a city busy with people and thrive when it is quiet. Closing their shops normally costs them earnings. What would burning the shops have done?

18 The people of Rome, then, are not failing to provide you with support. Make sure you are not seen to let them down.

Chapter 9

You have a consul brought safely through numerous traps and dangers, and out of death itself, not to keep himself alive but to save you. All social orders agree in their minds, intentions and words that the state must survive. Our country, which belongs to us all, is trapped by the fires and weapons of a godless conspiracy. She holds out her hands, begging you. She puts herself in your care; she puts the citizens’ lives there, the citadel and Capitol there, the household gods’ altars there, Vesta’s unending fire there, every god’s temple and sanctuary there, the city walls and buildings there. Beyond this, today it is for you to judge the fate of your own lives, the lives of your families, everyone’s possessions, your houses and your firesides.

19 Your leader puts you first and himself out of mind. That is not an opportunity that always comes your way. Every social order, every individual, Rome’s entire population, holds the same opinion. Today, for the first time in a domestic political question, we see that happen. Think of the work it took to found our empire, the bravery that secured liberty, and the gods’ generosity that enlarged and increased our resources. One night came close to undoing it all. Your duty today is to prevent citizens ever again not just accomplishing something like that, but even imagining it. I say this not to spur you on, since you almost get ahead of me in commitment, but to show that my voice has carried out the consul’s responsibilities. It is a voice that ought to lead the state.

20 CHAPTER 10

Before going back to the question under debate, let me speak briefly about myself. I recognize that the enemies I have acquired number as many as the conspirators. As you can see, that group is extremely large. But I regard it as shameful, powerless and contemptible. Perhaps one day someone’s criminal madness will stir that group into greater strength than your authority and the state’s. Even if that happens, senators, I will never wish I had acted or decided differently. Everyone faces death, the threat they may be making against me. Nobody, though, has attained the degree of praise for his life that you have conferred on mine by your decrees. In other cases the thanksgiving you have decreed has always been for good service to the state. Only in mine has it been for keeping the state in existence.

21 Give Scipio his fame: his strategy and bravery forced Hannibal out of Italy and back to Africa. Give the other Africanus his outstanding praise: he destroyed the empire’s two most hostile cities, Carthage and Numantia. Recognize Paulus as exceptional: Perseus, once a king of the highest power and birth, added distinction to his chariot. Let Marius’s fame last forever: he twice released Italy from siege and fear of enslavement. Rank Pompey higher than everyone: his accomplishments and courage have the same geographical reach and boundaries as the path of the sun. Surely there is space for some glory of my own among all those honors. Unless, of course, giving us new provinces to travel out to matters more than ensuring that even men abroad have a home they can come back to victorious.

22 Foreign success does have one advantage over success at home. Defeated foreigners become subjects, or, when accepted as friends, feel indebted to the kindness shown them. With citizens it is different. Once some madness has corrupted them into enemies of their country, stopping their attack on the state does not make it possible either to hold them down with force or win them over with favors. That is why I can see a never-ending struggle with corrupt fellow citizens ahead of me. But I am sure I can readily fend it off from myself and my family. I have your support and that of every good person, and there is the memory of these terrible dangers. That memory will stay forever, not just among the people who were rescued, but in the conversation and thought of every nation. No power, surely, can ever be found great enough to smash and weaken your alliance with the knights and the strong agreement of all the good people.

23 CHAPTER 11

What, then, do I ask in return? For the military command, troops and province that I chose not to take; for the triumph and other public distinctions I refused in order to guard Rome and protect you; for the relationships with provincial clients and hosts, which I nevertheless use my influence at Rome to preserve, working as hard at maintaining them as at acquiring them—for all of this, for my exceptional commitment to you and for my efforts, which you can see, to preserve the state, I ask only that you remember this hour and the whole period of my consulship. While that stays in your minds, I will think of myself as sheltered behind the strongest possible wall. Should violent criminals prove my hope mistaken and overpower it, I put my little boy in your care. His protection, not just from danger but in his social standing, will surely be sufficient if you remember whose son he is: the son of the man who bore all the risk himself and preserved everything here.

24 So deliberate as carefully as you have begun, and with courage. At stake are your ultimate safety and Rome’s, your wives and children, altars and firesides, sanctuaries and temples, all the roofs and dwellings in the city, our power and freedom, Italy’s survival and the entire state. Your consul is a man who will follow your decrees without hesitation. Throughout his remaining life he can defend your decisions and personally make sure they are carried out.