WSTURGIS ORATIONES QUAEDAM SELECTAE, NOTIS ILLUSTRATAE. EDITIO EXONIENSIS SECUNDA, EMENDATIOR. EXONIAE, NEO-HANT. 1 IMPENSIS CAROLI NORRIS ET SOC. MDCCCXI. BE IT REMEMBERED, that on this twenty ninth day of December, in the thirty fifth year of the Independence of the United States of America, CHARLES NORRIS of SEAL. Exeter, Printer, and Company have deposited in this Office the title of a book whereof they claim as proprietors in the words following, to wit: "M. T. Ciceronis Orationes Quaedam Selectae, Notis Illustratae Editio Exoniensis Secunda Emendatior." In Conformity to an act of the Congress of the United States, entitled "an act for the encouragement of learning, by securing Copies of Maps, Charts, and other books to the Authors and Proprietors therein mentioned." And also an act supplementary to 66 an act for the encouragement of Learning by securing Copies of Maps, Charts, and other books to the Authors and Proprietors therein mentioned, and extending the benefit thereof to the Arts of Designing, Engraving, and Etching Historical and other Prints." R. CUTTS SHANNON, Clerk of said District. ORATIO I. IN L. CATILINAM. INTRODUCTION. IN the six hundred and eighty seventh year of Rome, Lucius Sergius Catiline, a man of patrician rank and great abilities, but of a wicked and ambitious disposition, formed a conspiracy to elevate himself and his accomplices to power and wealth upon the ruins of his country. From his earliest youth, he was fond of civil wars, of rapine, and of massacres. There was no crime however atrocious, which he was not willing to commit; there was no vice however infamous, of which he was not inclined to be guilty. He debauched a young lady of illustrious family, afterwards seduced a Vestal, and is said to have violated the chastity of his own daughter. To gratify Sylla, whose partisan he was, he assassinated a brother. He even murdered a son, because Aurelia Orestilla, whom he wished to marry, disliked to have a full grown son in law. Indeed he so often committed murder and other heinous crimes, that he did not seem to think the commission of them criminal. But at length, not contented with the commission of many private vices, he conceived the design of a conspiracy, which, had it been executed, would have been unparalleled in the annals of history. After his return from Africa, the province assigned to him upon the expiration of his Praetorship, he sued for the Consulship; but, in consequence of an accusation of extortion and mal-administration, which the African cities preferred against him in Rome, he was not permitted to assert and maintain his pretensions to that office. It was during the pendency of this trial, that, it is supposed, he first thought of destroying the laws and usurping the power of the republic. Enraged by this check to his ambition, he resolved to acquire by force that authority, which he could not obtain by election. He entered into a combination with Autronius, Cneius Piso, and others, to put the consuls to death and seize the consulship. Their design, at the first attempt to execute it, was frustrated by the absence of Crassus, and by Julius Caesar's not giving the signal agreed upon, and they therefore thought it prudent to defer its execution to a future period. At the time appointed, they had enlarged their plan, and determined not only to kill the consuls, but also to murder the Senate. But by too great precipitancy the conspirators again defeated their own designs. Catiline, however, did not remit his exertions; he seems to have been calculated to make the most hazardous attempts with the greatest discouragements. He was now more de |