real banishment? I say not expressly so: but were I to advise in the case, it is the best course you can take.

For what is there, Catiline, that can now give you pleasure in this city? wherein, if we except the profligate crew of your accomplices, there is not a man but dreads and abhors you? Is there a domestic stain from which your character is exempted? Have you not rendered yourself infamous by every vice that can brand private life? What scenes of lust have not your eyes beheld? What guilt has not stained your hands? What pollution has not defiled your whole body? What youth, entangled by thee in the allurements of debauchery, hast thou not prompted by arms to deeds of violence, or seduced by incentives into the snares of sensuality? And lately, when by procuring the death of your former wife, you had made room in your house for another, did you not add to the enormity of that crime, by a new and unparalleled measure of guilt? But I pass over this, and choose to let it remain in silence, that the memory of so monstrous a piece of wickedness, or at least of its having been committed with impunity, may not descend to posterity. I pass over too the entire ruin of your fortunes, which you are sensible must befal you the very next month: and shall proceed to the mention of such particulars as regard not the infamy of your private character, nor the distresses and turpitude of your domestic life; but such as concern the very being of the republic, and the lives and safety of us all. Can the light of life, or the air you breathe, be grateful to you, Catiline; when you are conscious there

is not a man here present but knows, that on the last of December, in the consulship of Lepidus and Tullus, you appeared in the Comitium with a dagger! That you had got together a band of ruffians, to assassinate the consuls, and the most considerable men in Rome? and that this execrable and frantic design was defeated, not by any awe or remorse in you, but by the prevailing good fortune of the people of Rome. But I pass over those things, as being already well known: there are others of a later date. How many attempts have you made upon my life, since I was nominated consul, and since I entered upon the actual execution of that office? How many thrusts of thine, so well aimed that they seemed unavoidable, have I parried by an artful evasion; and, as they term it, a gentle deflection of body? You attempt, you contrive, you set on foot nothing of which I have not timely information. Yet you cease not to concert, and enterprise. How often has that dagger been wrested out of thy hands? How often, by some accident, has it dropped before the moment of execution? yet you cannot resolve to lay it aside. How, or with what rites you have consecrated it, is hard to say, that you think yourself thus obliged to lodge it in the bosom of a consul!

What are we to think of your present situation and conduct? For I will now address you, not with the detestation your actions deserve, but with a compassion to which you have no just claim. You came some time ago into the senate. Did a single person of this numerous assembly, not excepting your most intimate relations and friends, deign to salute you? If there be no in

stance of this kind in the memory of man, do you expect that I should embitter with reproaches, a doom confirmed by the silent detestation of all present? Were not the benches where you sit forsaken, as soon as you was observed to approach them? Did not all the consular senators, whose destruction you have so often plotted, quit immediately the part of the house where you thought proper to place yourself? How are you able to bear all this treatment? For my own part, were my slaves to discover such a dread of me, as your fellow-citizens express of you, I should think it necessary to abandon my own house. And do you hesitate about leaving the city? Was I even wrongfully suspected, and thereby rendered obnoxious to my countrymen, I would sooner withdraw myself from public view, than be beheld with looks full of reproach and indignation. And do you, whose conscience tells you that you are the object of an universal, a just, and a long merited hatred, delay a moment to escape from the looks and presence of a peop e, whose eyes and senses can no longer endure you among them? Should your parents dread and hate you, and be obstinate to all your endeavours to appease them, you would doubtless withdraw somewhere from their sight. But now your country, the common parent of us all, hates and dreads you, and has long regarded you as a parricide, intent upon the design of destroying her. And will you neither respect her authority, submit to her advice, nor stand in awe of her power? Thus does she reason with you, Catiline; and thus does she, in some measure, address you by her silence. Not an enor

mity has happened these many years, but has had thee for its author: not a crime has been perpetrated without thee: the murder of so many of our citizens, the oppression and plunder of our allies, have through thee alone escaped punishment, and been exercised with unrestrained violence: thou hast found means not only to trample upon law and justice, but even to subvert and destroy them. Though this past behaviour of thine was beyond all patience, yet have I borne with it as I could. But now, to be in continual apprehension from thee alone; on every alarm to tremble at the name of Catiline; to see no designs formed against me that speak not thee for their author, is altogether insupportable. Be gone, then, and rid me of my present terrour; that, if just, I may avoid ruin; if groundless, I may at length cease to fear.

Should your country, as I said, address you in these terms, ought she not to find obedience, even supposing her unable to compel you to such a step? But did you not even offer to become a prisoner? Did you not say, that, to avoid suspicion, you would submit to be confined in the house of M. Lepidus? When he declined receiving you, you had the assurance to come to me, and request you might be secured at my house. When I likewise told you, that I could never think myself safe in the same house, when I judged it even dangerous to be in the same city with you, you applied to Q. Metellus the prætor. Being repulsed here too, you went to the excellent M. Marcellus, your companion; who, no doubt, you imagined would be very watchful in confining you, very quick in discerning your secret

practices, and very resolute in bringing you to justice. How justly may we pronounce him worthy of iron and a jail, whose own conscience condemns him to restraint? If it be so then, Catiline, and you cannot submit to the thought of dying here, do you hesitate to retire to some other country, and commit to flight and solitude a life, so often and so justly forfeited to thy country? But, say you, put the question to the senate (for so you affect to talk), and if it be their pleasure that I go into banishment, I am ready to obey. I will put no such question; it is contrary to my temper: yet will I give you an opportunity of knowing the sentiments of the senate with regard to you. Leave the city, Catiline; deliver the republic from its fears; go, if you wait only for that word, into banishment. Observe now, Catiline; mark the silence and composure of the assembly. Does a single senator remonstrate, or so much as offer to speak? Is it needful they should confirm by their voice, what they so expressly declare by their silence? But had I addressed myself in this manner to that excellent youth P. Sextius, or to the brave M. Marcellus, the senate would ere now have risen up against me, and laid violent hands upon their cousul in this very temple; and justly too. But with regard to you, Catiline, their silence declares their approbation, their acquiescence amounts to a decree, and by saying nothing they proclaim their consent. Nor is this true of the senators alone, whose authority you affect to prize, while you make no account of their lives; but of these brave and worthy Roman knights, and other illustrious citi