The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [309]
12. ‘What harm,’ said he, ‘when I see two bodies, the one lean and consumptive with a head,
13. ‘The other great and strong without one, if I put a head to the body that lacks one?’
14. This representation of the senate and the people excited yet greater apprehensions in Cicero.
15. He put on armour, and was attended from his house by many citizens, bent on protecting him.
16. Letting his tunic slip partly from his shoulders,
17. He showed his armour underneath, thus showing his danger to the spectators;
18. Who, being much moved by it, gathered round to defend him; and Catiline again lost the vote for the consulship.
19. After this Catiline’s soldiers in Etruria began to form themselves into companies, the day appointed for the revolution being near.
20. Late one night Cicero was woken by a group of the principal citizens of Rome,
21. Among them Marcus Crassus, Marcus Marcellus and Scipio Metellus.
22. Crassus had that night been secretly brought a bundle of letters by an unknown person. They were directed to various senators,
23. And one of them was for Crassus himself. It did not have a sender’s name.
24. He read it, and found that it advised him to leave the city because a great slaughter was intended by Catiline.
25. He did not open the other letters, but took them immediately to Cicero,
26. Being apprehensive of the danger, and to free himself of any suspicion of leaguing with Catiline.
27. Cicero summoned the senate to meet at dawn. He brought the letters with him, and delivered them to their addressees,
28. To be read out loud; they all alike contained an account of the conspiracy.
29. And when Quintus Arrius, a man of praetorian dignity, reported how soldiers were collecting in companies in Etruria,
30. And that Manlius was in motion with a large force near those cities,
31. Waiting for orders from Rome, the senate made a decree granting exceptional powers to the consuls, to do their best to save the state.
32. After Cicero had received this power, he committed all affairs outside Rome to Quintus Metellus, but kept the management of the city in his own hands.
33. Such a large number of people guarded him every day that the marketplace was filled with his followers when he entered it.
Chapter 72
1. Catiline, impatient of further delay, resolved to leave Rome and go to Manlius,
2. But he commanded Marcius and Cethegus to take their swords,
3. And go early in the morning to Cicero’s gates, as if to greet him, but there to slay him.
4. Cicero was however warned of this plan. Cethegus and Marcius came at dawn,
5. But being denied entrance they made an outcry at the gates, which excited yet more suspicion.
6. Cicero summoned the senate, and when Catiline arrived with his followers, intending to make his defence,
7. None of the senators would sit near him, but all of them left the bench where he placed himself;
8. And when Catiline began to speak, they heckled him.
9. Then Cicero stood up and commanded him to leave the city,
10. On the grounds that since he wished to govern the commonwealth with words and the other with arms,
11. It was necessary there should be a wall between them.
Chapter 73
1. Catiline immediately left Rome with three hundred armed men;
2. And assuming, as if he were a magistrate, the rods, axes and military ensigns, he went to Manlius,
3. And having collected a body of twenty thousand men, he marched to various cities, trying to raise revolt.
4. Now that it had come to open civil war, Antonius was sent with troops to fight him.
5. The remainder of Catiline’s conspirators still in Rome were kept together and encouraged by Cornelius Lentulus.
6. Though of noble family, Lentulus was a dissolute person, who for his debauchery had been turned out of the senate,
7. And was now holding the office of praetor for the second time,
8. As the custom is with those seeking to regain the dignity of senator.
9. This man, bad in his own nature and now inflamed by Catiline,
10. Resolved to murder all the senators, and as many other citizens