The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [310]
11. And to set the city on fire, sparing nobody except Pompey’s children,
12. Intending to keep them as pledges so that he could reconcile with Pompey, who was still at the eastern wars.
13. The night appointed for this design fell during a festival.
14. Swords, flax and sulphur were hidden in the house of Cethegus;
15. A hundred men were detailed to start fires in different quarters of the city at the same moment, so that everything would be in flames together.
16. Others were appointed to block the aqueducts, and to kill those who tried to carry water to the fires.
17. While these plans were in preparation, it happened that there were two ambassadors from the Allobroges staying in Rome;
18. A nation at that time in a distressed condition, and uneasy under the Roman government.
19. Lentulus and his party judged these men useful instruments to move Gaul to revolt,
20. So they admitted them to the conspiracy and gave them letters to their own leaders, and letters to Catiline.
21. In the former they promised liberty, in the latter they exhorted Catiline to set all slaves free, and bring them to Rome.
22. They sent a man called Titus, a native of Croton, to accompany the ambassadors and carry the letters to Catiline.
23. Cicero followed the plotting of the conspirators closely, having spies in place to observe all that was done and said,
24. And keeping a secret correspondence with many who pretended to join the conspiracy, including these ambassadors of the Allobroges.
25. He thus knew all the discourse which passed between them and the strangers;
26. And, lying in wait for them by night, he arrested Titus the Crotonian with his letters.
27. The next morning he summoned the senate, where he read the letters aloud and examined the informers.
28. Junius Silanus witnessed that Cethegus said that three consuls and four praetors were to be slain. Piso testified other matters of the like nature;
29. Caius Sulpicius, one of the praetors, was sent to Cethegus’ house and found a cache of darts and of armour,
30. And a still greater number of swords and daggers, all newly sharpened.
31. The senate decreed indemnity to Titus the Crotonian in return for his confession.
32. Lentulus was convicted, abjured his praetorial office and put off his senatorial robe edged with purple.
33. He and the other conspirators were then committed to the custody of the praetors.
Chapter 74
1. After giving details of the conspiracy and arrests to the crowds waiting outside,
2. Cicero withdrew to consider what punishment the conspirators should suffer.
3. He was reluctant to inflict the death penalty, partly from clemency,
4. But also in case he should be thought too strict in executing men of the noblest birth and most powerful friendships in the city;
5. And yet, if he treated them mildly, there could only be further danger from them.
6. For there was no likelihood, if they escaped death, that they would be reconciled,
7. But rather, adding new rage to their former wickedness, they would rush into every kind of audacity.
8. Cicero was also worried that as he had a reputation among the people for mildness,
9. They might easily think him timid and unmanly if he did not rigorously apply the law.
10. The next day in the senate Silanus argued that the conspirators should suffer the utmost penalty.
11. Everyone agreed one after another until it came to Julius Caesar’s turn.
12. He was then only a young man, at the outset of his career,
13. But he had already set himself on the course which led to Rome becoming a monarchy.
14. No one else foresaw this except Cicero, who had some inkling of Caesar’s ambitions and capacities.
15. But quite a few suspected that Caesar was sympathetic to Catiline’s views,
16. And some of them believed that Cicero voluntarily overlooked the evidence against him for fear of his friends and power;
17. For it was evident to everybody that if Caesar was accused with the conspirators,
18. They were more likely to be saved with him than he to be punished with them.
19. So when it