tinction between sacred and profane, and threw off all consideration and self-restraint.

The love of irregular gratification, open debauchery, and all kinds of luxury, had spread abroad. Men forgot their sex; women threw off all the restraints of modesty. To gratify appetite, they sought for every kind of production by land and by sea; they slept before there was any inclination for sleep; they no longer waited to feel hunger, thirst, cold, or fatigue, but anticipated them all by luxurious indulgence. Such propensities drove the youth, when their patrimonies were exhausted, to criminal practices; for their minds, impregnated with evil habits, could not easily abstain from gratifying their passions, and were thus the more inordinately devoted in every way to rapacity and extravagance.

In so populous and so corrupt a city, Catiline, as it was very easy to do, kept about him, like a bodyguard, crowds of the unprincipled and desperate. For all those shameless, libertine, and profligate characters, who had dissipated their patrimonies by gaming, luxury, and sensuality; all who had contracted heavy debts, to purchase immunity for their crimes or offenses; all assassins or sacrilegious persons from every quarter, convicted or dreading conviction for their evil deeds; all, besides, whom their tongue or their hand maintained by perjury or civil bloodshed; all, in fine, whom wickedness, poverty, or a guilty conscience disquieted, were the associates and intimate friends of Catiline. And if any one, as yet of unblemished character, fell into his society, he was presently rendered, by daily intercourse and temptation, similar and equal to the rest. But it was the young whose acquaintance he chiefly courted; as their minds, ductile and unsettled from their age, were easily insnared by his stratagems. For as the passions of each, according to his years, appeared excited, he furnished mistresses to some, bought horses and dogs for others, and spared, in a word, neither his purse nor his character, if he could but make them his devoted and trustworthy supporters. There were some, I know, who thought that the youth who frequented the house of Catiline were guilty of crimes against nature ; but this report arose rather from other causes than from any evidence of the fact.

Catiline, in his youth, had been guilty of many criminal connections, with a virgin of noble birth, with a priestess of Vesta, and of many other offenses of this nature, in defiance

alike of law and religion. At last, when he was smitten with a passion for Aurelia Orestilla, in whom no good man, at any time of her life, commended anything but her beauty, it is confidently believed that because she hesitated to marry him, from the dread of having a grown-up step-son, he cleared the house for their nuptials by putting his son to death. And this crime appears to me to have been the chief cause of hurrying forward the conspiracy. For his guilty mind, at peace with neither gods nor men, found no comfort either waking or sleeping; so effectually did conscience desolate his tortured spirit. His complexion, in consequence, was pale, his eyes haggard, his walk sometimes quick and sometimes slow, and distraction was plainly apparent in every feature and look.

The young men, whom, as I said before, he had enticed to join him, he initiated, by various methods, in evil practices. From among them he furnished false witnesses, and forgers of signatures; and he taught them all to regard, with equal unconcern, honor, property, and danger. At length, when he had stripped them of all character and shame, he led them to other and greater enormities. If a motive for crime did not readily occur, he incited them, nevertheless, to circumvent and murder inoffensive persons, just as if they had injured him; for, lest their hand or heart should grow torpid for want of employment, he chose to be gratuitously wicked and cruel.

Depending on such accomplices and adherents, and knowing that the load of debt was everywhere great, and that the veterans of Sylla, having spent their money too liberally, and remembering their spoils and former victory, were longing for a civil war, Catiline formed the design of overthrowing the government. There was no army in Italy; Pompey was fighting in a distant part of the world; he himself had great hopes of obtaining the consulship; the senate was wholly off its guard; everything was quiet and tranquil; and all these circumstances were exceedingly favorable for Catiline.

Accordingly, about the beginning of June, in the consulship of Lucius Cæsar and Caius Figulus, he at first addressed each of his accomplices separately, encouraged some, and sounded others, and informed them of his own resources, of the unprepared condition of the state, and of the great prizes to be expected from the conspiracy. When he had ascertained, to his satisfaction, all that he required, he summoned all whose

necessities were the most urgent, and whose spirits were the most daring, to a general conference.

When Catiline saw these assembled, though he had often discussed many points with them singly, yet thinking it would be to his purpose to address and exhort them in a body, retired with them into a private apartment of his house, where, when all witnesses were withdrawn, he harangued them.

When these men, surrounded with numberless evils, but without any resources or hopes of good, had heard his address, though they thought it much for their advantage to disturb the public tranquillity, yet most of them called on Catiline to state on what terms they were to engage in the contest; what benefits they were to expect from taking up arms; and what support and encouragement they had, and in what quarters. Catiline then promised them the abolition of their debts; a proscription of the wealthy citizens; offices, sacerdotal dignities, plunder, and all other gratifications which war, and the license of conquerors, can afford. He added that Piso was in Hither Spain, and Publius Sittius Nucerinus with an army in Mauritania, both of whom were privy to his plans; that Caius Antonius, whom he hoped to have for a colleague, was canvassing for the consulship, a man with whom he was intimate, and who was involved in all manner of embarrassments; and that, in conjunction with him, he himself, when consul, would commence operations. He, moreover, assailed all the respectable citizens with reproaches, commended each of his associates by name, reminded one of his poverty, another of his ruling passion, several others of their danger or disgrace, and many of the spoils which they had obtained by the victory of Sylla. When he saw their spirits sufficiently elevated, he charged them to attend to his interest at the election of consuls, and dismissed the assembly.

There were some, at that time, who said that Catiline, having ended his speech, and wishing to bind his accomplices in guilt by an oath, handed round among them, in goblets, the blood of a human body mixed with wine; and that when all, after an imprecation, had tasted of it, as is usual in sacred rites, he disclosed his design; and they asserted that he did this, in order that they might be the more closely attached to one another, by being mutually conscious of such an atrocity. But

some thought that this report, and many others, were invented by persons who supposed that the odium against Cicero, which afterward arose, might be lessened by imputing an enormity of guilt to the conspirators who had suffered death. The evidence which I have obtained, in support of this charge, is not at all in proportion to its magnitude.

Among those present at this meeting was Quintus Curius, a man of no mean family, but immersed in vices and crimes, and whom the censors had ignominiously expelled from the senate. In this person there was not less levity than impudence; he could neither keep secret what he heard, nor conceal his own crimes; he was altogether heedless what he said or what he did. He had long had a criminal intercourse with Fulvia, a woman of high birth; but growing less acceptable to her, because, in his reduced circumstances, he had less means of being liberal, he began, on a sudden, to boast, and to promise her seas and mountains; threatening her, at times, with the sword, if she were not submissive to his will; and acting, in his general conduct, with greater arrogance than ever. Fulvia, having learned the cause of his extravagant behavior, did not keep such danger to the state a secret; but, without naming her informant, communicated to several persons what she had heard and under what circumstances, concerning Catiline's conspiracy. This intelligence it was that incited the feelings of the citizens to give the consulship to Marcus Tullius Cicero. For before this period, most of the nobility were moved with jealousy, and thought the consulship in some degree sullied, if a man of no family, however meritorious, obtained it. But when danger showed itself, envy and pride were laid aside.

Accordingly, when the comitia were held, Marcus Tullius and Caius Antonius were declared consuls; an event which gave the first shock to the conspirators. The ardor of Catiline, however, was not at all diminished; he formed every day new schemes; he deposited arms, in convenient places, throughout Italy; he sent sums of money borrowed on his own credit, or that of his friends, to a certain Manlius, at Fæsulæ, who was subsequently the first to engage in hostilities. At this period, too, he is said to have attached to his cause great numbers of men of all classes, and some women, who had, in their earlier days, supported an expensive life by the price of their beauty, but who, when age had lessened their gains but not their extravagance, had contracted heavy debts. By the influence of

these females, Catiline hoped to gain over the slaves in Rome, to get the city set on fire, and either to secure the support of their husbands or take away their lives.

In the number of those ladies was Sempronia, a woman who had committed many crimes with the spirit of a man. In birth and beauty, in her husband and her children, she was extremely fortunate; she was skilled in Greek and Roman literature; she could sing, play, and dance, with greater elegance than became a woman of virtue, and possessed many other accomplishments that tend to excite the passions. But nothing was ever less valued by her than honor or chastity. Whether she was more prodigal of her money or her reputation, it would have been difficult to decide. Her desires were so ardent that she oftener made advances to the other sex than waited for solicitation. She had frequently, before this period, forfeited her word, forsworn debts, been privy to murder, and hurried into the utmost excesses by her extravagance and poverty. But her abilities were by no means despicable; she could compose verses, jest, and join in conversation either modest, tender, or licentious. In a word, she was distinguished by much refinement of wit, and much grace of expression.

Catiline, having made these arrangements, still canvassed for the consulship for the following year; hoping that, if he should be elected, he would easily manage Antonius according to his pleasure. Nor did he, in the mean time, remain inactive, but devised schemes, in every possible way, against Cicero, who, however, did not want skill or policy to guard against them. For, at the very beginning of his consulship, he had, by making many promises through Fulvia, prevailed on Quintus Curius, whom I have already mentioned, to give him secret information of Catiline's proceedings. He had also persuaded his colleague, Antonius, by an arrangement respecting their provinces, to entertain no sentiment of disaffection toward the state; and he kept around him, though without ostentation, a guard of his friends and dependents.

When the day of the comitia came, and neither Catiline's efforts for the consulship, nor the plots which he had laid for the consuls in the Campus Martius, were attended with success, he determined to proceed to war, and resort to the utmost extremities, since what he had attempted secretly had ended in confusion and disgrace.

He accordingly dispatched Caius Manlius to Fæsulæ, and