[79]
You ask of me why I am
afraid of Catiline? I am not; and I have taken care that no one should have any reason to be
afraid of him; but I do say that those soldiers of his, whom I see present here, are objects
of fear: nor is the army which Lucius Catiline now has with him as formidable as those men are
who are said to have deserted that army; for they have not deserted it but they have been left
by him as spies, as men placed in ambuscade, to threaten our lives and liberties. Those men
are very anxious that an upright consul and an able general—a man connected both by
nature and by fortune with the safety of the republic, should by your decision be removed from
the office of protecting the city, from the guardianship of the state. Their swords and their
audacity I have procured the rejection of in the campus, I have disarmed them in the forum, I
have often checked them at my own house; but if you now give them up one of the consuls, they
will have gained much more by your votes than by their own swords. That which I, in spite of
the resistance of many, have managed and carried through, namely, that on the first of January
there should be two consuls in the republic, is of great consequence, O judges.
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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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