a very clear account of the proceedings in the Senate. This address is the THIRD CATILINARIAN ORATION. 18. This exposure of Catiline's cold blooded schemes, involving destruction of property, burning of the city; and indiscriminate massacre, rallied a large number of waverers to Cicero's side. 19. An attempt to rescue the prisoners on the next day (Dec. 4) was prevented by strong watches which Cicero posted to guard the Forum and the Capitol. Dec. 5. Debate as to the penalty. On the morrow, after providing military protection for the city, he summoned the Senate to the Temple of Concord to deliberate on the punishment of the conspirators. As consul-elect, D. Junius Silanus was first asked his opinion; he was in favour of a death-sentence. The votes of the next speakers were in the same direction. Then Julius Caesar, who was praetor-elect, rose and condemned such a punishment as illegal and likely to produce serious consequences; he proposed perpetual custody in the provincial towns. This speech created a profound impression, and the following speakers all took a merciful view. Cicero then intervened in the debate, making the speech known as the FOURTH CATILINARIAN ORATION; he summed up and criticized the arguments which had been advanced for and against death, and, without committing himself to a definite statement, seems to have favoured the death-sentence. The Senate still wavered, till the young C. Porcius Cato arose and reminded the Senate of the horrors they had escaped; his vehement speech decided the Senate; they passed the vote for death. Before night the conspirators were taken to the Tullianum, and strangled in its underground dungeon. Cicero announced their end to the waiting crowds by the single word 'vixerunt.' Shouts and applause accompanied him on his way to his home, and he was saluted as Pater patriae; at nightfall the citizens illuminated their houses in token of their joy. The Senate had already showed their gratitude by bestowing public thanks on Cicero, and decreeing a public thanksgiving in his name. (Catiline and his forces were destroyed early next year, 62 B. C., at Pistoria, after a stubborn fight.) Authority for Cicero's charges. Our knowledge of Catiline's conspiracy is chiefly drawn from two sources: (i.) Cicero's speeches and writings; (ii.) Sallust's History of Catiline. (i.) Even in an English law-court, if we trusted to the counsel for either side for a truthful account of the facts of the case, we should be sadly misled. In Rome a prosecutor was allowed still more licence; he could exaggerate small offences into monstrous crimes, could blacken his opponent's character by foul and unjust abuse, he could trump up imaginary charges. It was Cicero's interest to magnify the atrocity of Catiline's aims, and he did do so with all the power of a great orator. He brings many vague accusations, and some three or four charges on which he had been formally acquitted-though perhaps by bribery. Rome evidently regarded his accusations as possibly unfounded, for, till the rising of Manlius, very few people believed in the existence of a conspiracy. Cicero's letters, at other times so useful to us, here altogether fail; his chief friend Atticus was with him at this period, and no letters passed between them. If Cicero were our sole authority for the story, we should be inclined to join Professor Beesly in white-washing Catiline. But Sallust (ii.) gives substantially the same account of the conspiracy; . Sallust could have no object in supporting Cicero; he was a Caesarian, and he wrote twenty years after the events, when it was possible to look at history with an unbiassed mind, free from passion. On the whole, save for a few exaggerations, we may feel sure that the account, as we have it, is a correct one; the verdict of antiquity is all in favour of Cicero's trustworthiness. A subject for Drama. A story so dramatic as this of Catiline's has rightly attracted the attention of writers of every kind; Cicero, with characteristic vanity, thought it a subject fit for a poem from his own pen. It is as well the poem is not extant, if he ever wrote it. The Norwegian dramatist Ibsen made it the subject of his first attempt at drama; in his tragedy Catiline he takes the same lenient view of Catiline that Professor Beesly does. The story has been dramatized in English more than once, though not recently. We hear of at least two attempts previous to the production of Ben Jonson's Catiline in A. D. 1611. This play opens with the appearance of the ghost of Sulla, inspiring Catiline with his revolutionary ideas, and then follows closely the story of the conspiracy as related by Sallust and Cicero. The hero of the play is Cicero, and one of the chief scenes is that in which Cicero in the senate-house is making the famous First Speech. In this scene, in his endeavour to stick to the original, Ben Jonson puts into the mouth of Cicero a speech of 283 lines of blank verse, with an occasional interruption from some senator. Unfortunately Cicero's telling periods, when translated into English blank verse, sometimes inaccurately, lose all their force and vigour, and the speech is tiresome in the extreme. It would tax the patience of any audience, and would tire any actor; yet the play was performed with success, and was repeated. Below is a sample of Ben Jonson's rendering (Cic, Cat. i. ch. 2, § 5 tum denique, &c.) : 'Then will I take thee, when no man is found So lost, so wicked, nay, so like thy self, But shall profess, 'tis done of need and right. I have those eyes and ears shall still keep guard And thou not feel it.' III. LIFE OF CICERO. Early life and training. Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in 106 B. C. at the picturesque town of Arpinum (modern Arpino', in the Volscian mountains, and was thus a fellow-townsman of the great C. Marius who was MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. (From a bust at Madrid.) born there in 157 B. C. He belonged to an old and well-to-do family, of equestrian dignity, but one which, never having held any of the high offices of state, was not ranked as noble. At an early age he and his |