Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics)

by Cicero

  To these most solemn words of our country, and to all individuals who share the feelings she expresses, I will make this brief answer. Had I judged that punishing Catiline with death was the best course of action, conscript fathers, I should not have given that gladiator a single hour of life to enjoy. For if it is the case that our most distinguished and illustrious citizens did not merely not damage their reputations when they killed Saturninus, the Gracchi, Flaccus,* and many other figures of the past, but actually enhanced them, then certainly I had no need to fear that killing this murderer of Roman citizens would do any harm in the future to my own reputation. But even if there was considerable danger of its doing me harm, I have always been of the opinion that unpopularity earned by doing what is right is not unpopularity at all, but glory.

  [30] And yet there are not a few members of this order who either fail to see what is hanging over us or pretend not to see it. These people have fed Catiline’s hopes by their feeble expressions of opinion, and have given strength to the growing conspiracy by their reluctance to believe in its existence. Their authority is such that, had I punished Catiline, many people—not just traitors, but people who do not know any better—would say that I had acted in a cruel and tyrannical manner. But as it is, I know that if he goes to Manlius’ camp, as he means to, there will be no one so stupid as not to see that the conspiracy exists, and no one so wicked as not to acknowledge that it exists.

  But if he, and he alone, is killed, I know that this cancer in the state can be repressed only for a short time: it cannot be suppressed permanently. On the other hand, if he removes himself and takes all his followers with him, and brings together in one place all the other castaways he has collected from here and there, we will be able to wipe out and expunge not only this cancer which has grown up in our midst, but also the root and seed of future ills.

  [31] We have been living for a long time now, conscript fathers, amid the dangers of a conspiracy and the attempts on our lives, but somehow or other all this criminal activity and this long-standing violence and frenzy has come to a head during my tenure of the consulship. If, out of so many brigands, only this man here is removed, we will perhaps be under the impression, briefly, that we have been freed from our fear and anxiety. But the danger will remain, enclosed deep within the veins and vitals of the state. It is like when people who are seriously ill toss and turn with a burning fever: if they have a drink of cold water, they initially seem to find relief, but are afterwards much more seriously and violently ill than they were before. In the same way, this disease from which our country is suffering will initially seem to abate if this man is punished, but will then break out much more violently, as the other conspirators will still be alive.

  [32] Therefore let the traitors depart. Let them detach themselves from the good citizens, gather together in one place, and, as I have said many times now, be separated from us by the city wall. Let them stop attempting to assassinate the consul in his own home, thronging round the tribunal of the city praetor,* besieging the senate-house with swords, and preparing fire-arrows and torches to burn the city. Finally, let it be inscribed on the forehead of every citizen what he thinks about his country. I promise you this, conscript fathers, that we the consuls will show such conscientiousness, you will show such authority, the Roman equestrians will show such courage, and all loyal citizens will show such solidarity that, once Catiline has departed, you will see everything revealed, exposed, crushed, and punished.

  [33] With omens such as these, Catiline, and for the sake of the survival of the state, the death and destruction of yourself, and the ruin of those who have linked themselves to you in every type of crime and murder: be off to your sacrilegious and wicked war! And you, Jupiter, who were established by the same auspices as those by which Romulus founded this city, whom we rightly call the ‘Stayer’* of this city and empire, may you drive him and his associates away from your temple and the other temples, away from the buildings and walls of the city, and away from the lives and fortunes of all the citizens! And on these men who are the opponents of decent citizens, the enemies of their country, brigands of Italy, and linked together in an unholy alliance and syndicate of crime, on these, living and dead, may you inflict everlasting punishment!

  IN CATILINAM II

  [1] At long last, citizens, Lucius Catilina,* crazed with recklessness, panting with criminality, treacherously plotting the destruction of his country, and menacing you and this city with fire and the sword—this criminal we have expelled from Rome; or released; or followed with our farewells as he was leaving of his own accord. He has gone, departed, cleared off, escaped.* No longer will that grotesque monster plan the demolition of our city walls from inside those very walls. And we have indisputably beaten the one man who is at the head of this civil war. No longer, then, will that dagger of his be twisted between our ribs. In the Campus Martius, in the forum, in the senate-house, and in our own homes we will have nothing to fear. When he was driven from the city, he was dislodged from his point of vantage. So now we will be fighting a proper war in the open against an external enemy, with nothing to stop us. Without a doubt we destroyed him and won a magnificent victory when we turned him from secret plots to open banditry. [2] He has not taken with him, as he wished, a dagger covered in blood; he has departed with me still alive; I have wrenched his sword from his hand; and he has left the citizens unharmed and the city still standing—so just think of the sense of grief that must have overwhelmed and crushed him! He now lies prostrate, citizens, and realizes that he has been struck down and laid low. Again and again, surely, he is turning his eyes back towards this city, bewailing the fact that it has been snatched from his jaws. The city, on the other hand, seems to me delighted that it has vomited forth such a pestilence and spewed it out.

  [3] But it may be that some of you will take the view that ought really to be the view of everyone, and criticize me severely for what my speech boasts of and glories in—the fact that I did not arrest so lethal an enemy, but allowed him to escape. However, the blame for that, citizens, lies not with me, but with the circumstances. Lucius Catilina ought long ago to have paid the supreme punishment and been executed, as the tradition of our ancestors, the strictness of my office, and the national interest demanded of me. But how many people do you think there were who refused to believe my allegations, how many who even spoke up for the offenders, how many who were so stupid as to imagine that the conspiracy did not exist, and how many who were so wicked as to give it their support? If I judged that by removing Lucius Catilina I could free you completely from danger, I would long ago have risked not only my popularity but even my life to remove him. [4] But at that time not even all of you were sufficiently convinced of the existence of the conspiracy, and I saw that, if I punished him with the death he deserved, I would make myself so unpopular that I would not be in a position to take action against his accomplices. Instead, therefore, I brought matters to a point where you would be able to fight in the open, and also to see clearly who the enemy was.

  As to how frightened we ought to be of such an enemy now that he is in the open, you will be able to divine my own feelings on this, citizens, from the fact that I am disappointed that he has taken so few of his fellow conspirators from the city with him. Indeed, I wish that he had marched out of Rome at the head of his entire force! I find that he took with him Tongilius,* a man he had first had sexual relations with when Tongilius was a boy, and also Publicius and Minucius, men whose unpaid restaurant bills were hardly likely to destabilize the state. But those he has left behind are quite another matter. What debts they have, what power, what noble birth!

  [5] When I think of our legions in Gaul, and the levy which Quintus Metellus* has held in Picenum and on the Umbrian coast, and also of the forces that we are building up day by day, I feel such contempt for that army of his, made up as it is of superannuated no-hopers, prodigal farmers, rural bankrupts, and men who would rather jump bail than desert his ranks. I need not go so
far as to present such people with our army’s line of battle: all I will have to do is to show them the praetor’s edict* and they will fall to the ground!

  As for those I notice rushing around the forum, standing in front of the senate-house, even coming into the senate, gleaming with lotions, resplendent in purple—I would rather he had taken these with him as his soldiers. But they are still here; and we should remember that it is not so much his army that we should be afraid of as those who have deserted it. In fact, we should be all the more alarmed by their behaviour, because they are aware that I know what they are up to, but they are not bothered by it. [6] I see who has been allotted Apulia, who has Etruria, who Picenum, who the Umbrian coast, and who has demanded responsibility for Rome itself, with the plans for assassination and arson. They are aware that all their plans of the night before last have been reported to me. I revealed them in the senate yesterday. Catiline himself took fright and fled. These men, on the other hand—what are they waiting for? They are gravely mistaken if they suppose that the leniency I have shown hitherto will last for ever.

  I have now achieved my objective, to make all of you see that a conspiracy has been openly formed against the state—unless, of course, there is anyone who thinks that people of Catiline’s ilk will not share his views! Leniency, then, is no longer appropriate: the situation demands firmness. But even at this late hour, I shall make one concession: they can still leave, still depart—so as to prevent poor Catiline pining away because he misses them so much! I shall even show them the way: he took the Via Aurelia, and if they get a move on, they will catch him up by this evening.

  [7] How lucky Rome would be, if it could indeed get rid of this urban trash! By Hercules, with Catiline alone flushed away, our country already seems refreshed and restored! Or can you think up or invent any evil or crime that he has not conceived of himself? What poisoner anywhere in Italy, what gladiator, what brigand, what cut-throat, what assassin, what forger of wills, what swindler, what glutton, what spendthrift, what adulterer, what loose woman, what corrupter of the young, what corrupt man himself, what degraded individual can be found who does not admit to having lived on the closest terms with Catiline? For years now, what murder has been committed without his involvement, what disgusting sexual outrage without his participation? [8] What other man has ever presented such great temptations to young men as he? Some of them he had sex with in the most disgraceful way, while with others he scandalously submitted himself to their own sexual impulses.* To some he promised whatever it was they hankered after, to others the death of their parents*—and not merely by urging them on, but by giving active help. And how quickly he succeeded in assembling a vast crowd of the worst of society—not only from the city, but from the countryside as well! Not only at Rome, but even in the furthest corners of Italy, there was not a single debtor whom he failed to recruit to this extraordinary criminal alliance. [9] So that you can appreciate the diversity of his interests and the full range of his activities, there is no gladiator in a training school who inclines ever so slightly to crime who does not also boast of his close relationship with Catiline—and, on the other hand, there is no actor* at all fickle and useless who does not also claim to be just about his dearest friend. Catiline himself, as a result of his repeated sexual misconduct and criminal activities, had acquired the ability to endure cold, hunger, thirst, and lack of sleep, and was therefore hailed as a hero by people of this sort. However, his sexual excess and criminal behaviour actually tended to dissipate his physical energy and mental power.

  [10] If his companions follow where he has gone, if those herds of desperate criminals clear out of the city, how happy we will be, how lucky Rome will be, how highly praised my consulship will be! For theirs is no ordinary depravity, their boldness not natural or tolerable. They think of nothing except murder, except arson, except pillage. They have squandered their inheritances, mortgaged their properties. Their money ran out long ago, and now their credit has begun to run out as well; but those tastes they had in their days of plenty remain the same. If, in all their drinking and gambling, they were concerned only with revelling and prostitutes, they would indeed be beyond hope, but we could put up with them. But who could possibly put up with cowards plotting against men of courage, fools against the wise, drunks against the sober, sluggards against the wakeful? Reclining at their banquets, embracing their whores, heavy with wine, stuffed with food, wreathed with flowers, drenched with perfume, and worn out by illicit sex, they belch out their plans for the massacre of decent citizens and the burning of Rome.

  [11] For my part, I am certain that these men are going to meet their doom, that the punishment long due for their treachery, wickedness, criminality, and self-indulgence is either imminent or at the very least on its way. My consulship cannot cure these men; but if it removes them, it will have extended the life of our state not for some short period, but for many centuries to come. There is no foreign people we need be afraid of, no king capable of making war on the Roman people: on land and sea, one man’s valour* has brought universal peace. The internal war is all that remains: the plots are within, the danger is within, the enemy is within! Our struggle is against decadence, against madness, against crime. Let me tell you, citizens, I am assuming the leadership of this war. I am taking on the hostility of these criminals myself. Whatever can be cured, I will somehow cure; but whatever has to be cut out, I will not allow to remain as a cancer within our state. So let them either leave or stay in peace—or, if they stay but keep their present intentions, let them expect what they deserve!

  [12] But there are some who say, citizens, that I have forced Catiline into exile. But if I could produce that effect with just a word, I would do the very same to those who are accusing me of this. Of course, Catiline was so timid or even bashful that he could not endure the consul’s voice, and as soon as he was ordered to go into exile, off he went! But yesterday,* citizens, when I had narrowly escaped being assassinated in my own home, I summoned the senate to the temple of Jupiter Stator and put the entire matter before the conscript fathers. After Catiline had arrived, what senator spoke to him? Who greeted him? Who even looked on him as merely a bad citizen, and not as the deadliest of enemies? In fact they went further: the leading senators moved away from the area of benches where he had taken his place, and left it empty and unoccupied.* [13] Then I, the stern consul who forces citizens into exile with a mere word, asked Catiline whether or not he had spent the night in a meeting at the house of Marcus Laeca. To begin with, the criminal, aware of his guilt, declined to answer: so I revealed further details. I explained what he had done during the night, where he had been, what he had planned for the following night, and how he had drawn up his strategy for the entire war. He hesitated: he was trapped. I therefore went on to ask him what was keeping him from setting out on the journey for which he had long prepared—since I had information that he had sent ahead arms, axes, rods of office,* trumpets, military standards, and also that silver eagle* to which he had even dedicated a shrine at his house. [14] So how could I be said to be forcing into exile a man whom I saw had already entered upon war? Manlius, the centurion who has set up a military camp in the territory of Faesulae, was, I suppose, acting on his own authority when he declared war on the Roman people;* and that camp is not in fact waiting at this very moment for Catiline to join it as its leader; and Catiline himself—forced into exile!—has actually taken himself off to Massilia, as is claimed, and not to this camp!

  What a wretched business it is, not simply running the country, but even saving it. For suppose that Lucius Catilina, trapped and thwarted by the measures I have taken, the labours I have undergone, and the risks I have run, now suddenly takes fright, changes his mind, abandons his supporters, gives up his plans for war, and turns from the path of crime and war to flight and exile. In that case, people will say not that I have torn from him the arms of criminality, or that my precautions have paralysed him with terror, or that he has been forced to give up hi
s hopes and his attempt, but that an innocent man has been driven into exile without trial by the violent threats of the consul. And if he does follow that path, there will be people who will regard him not as criminal but as pitiable, and will regard me not as an exceptionally diligent consul, but as the cruellest of tyrants! [15] But it will still be worth my while, citizens, to brave the storm of this false and unjust calumny, just so long as you are spared the danger of this horrifying, unspeakable war. So by all means let it be said that I have forced him into exile—just so long as that is where he goes.

  But, trust me, he will not go there. Never, citizens, for the sake of being spared hostility, will I pray to the immortal gods for you to receive news that Lucius Catilina is at the head of an enemy army and is mobilizing his troops. But I am afraid this is indeed the news you will be hearing within three days*—and I am much more concerned about possible future criticism for having let him go than for having driven him out. As for those who claim that he was driven out, when in fact he left by his own choice, just think what they would be saying if I had executed him! [16] Yet those who keep saying that Catiline is on his way to Massilia are not so much aggrieved that he is doing this as afraid in case he is. None of them is so kind-hearted that they really wish him to go to Massilia rather than to Manlius. And as for Catiline himself, even if—by Hercules!—he had never previously contemplated what he is now doing, he would still prefer to be killed in brigandage than live in exile. As it is, everything has gone for him exactly as he wished and planned, except that he did not manage to assassinate me before he left Rome. We ought therefore to hope that he is going into exile rather than complain that he is.