M. Tullius Cicero, For Lucius Murena
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

[49] In truth, men saw that you were hunting about for evidence; that you yourself looked gloomy, your friends out of spirits; they noticed your visits, your inquiries after proofs, your privy meetings with your witnesses, your conferences with your junior counsel; all which matters are certainly apt to make the countenance of a candidate look darker. Meantime they saw Catiline cheerful and joyous, accompanied by a band of youths, with a bodyguard of informers and assassins, elated by the hopes which he placed in the soldiers, and, as he himself said, by the promises of my colleagues; surrounded, too, with a numerous body of colonists from Arretium and Faesulae—a crowd made conspicuous by the presence of men of a very different sort in it, men who had been ruined by the disasters in the time of Sulla. His own countenance was full of fury; his eyes glared with wickedness; his discourse breathed nothing but arrogance. You might have thought that he had assured himself of the consulship, and that he had got it locked up at home. Murena he despised. Sulpicius he considered as his prosecutor, not as a competitor. He threatened him with violence; he threatened the republic.