[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.
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1 This is the same incident that is the subject of the preceding oration in defence of Rabirius.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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