M. Tullius Cicero, Against Vatinius
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

When you had produced in the assembly Lucius Vettius, who had confessed in the senate that he had been armed with the intention of putting Cnaeus Pompeius, that great and illustrious citizen, to death with his own hands; when you had produced him as a witness in the rostra, and placed him in that temple and place consecrated by the auspices; (in that place in which other tribunes of the people have been in the habit of bringing forward the chief men of the state, in order to sanction their authority by their presence, there you wished Vettius the informer to employ his tongue and voice in support of your wickedness and ambitious designs:)—did not Lucius Vettius say, in that assembly which you had convened, when questioned by you, that he had had those men for the originators and encouragers of, and accomplices in that wicked conduct, whom if the city had been deprived of, (and that was your real object at that time,) it could not have continued to stand?

You had endeavoured to murder Marcus Bibulus, as you were not contented with shutting him up in his house; you had stripped him of his consulship,¹ you were anxious to deprive him of his country. You wished also to murder Lucius Lucullus, whose exploits you envied above measure, because, I suppose, you from your boyhood had had an eye yourself to the glory of a general; and Caius Curio, the unceasing enemy of all wicked men, the leader of the public council, a man of the greatest freedom in maintaining the common liberties of the citizens, with his son, the chief of the youth of Rome, and who had already shown more devotion to the cause of the republic than could have been expected from his age;