2.
But I say nothing of the circumstances under which each of us was elected. I
will allow that chance may have been the mistress of the Campus Martius. It is more to the purpose
to say how we conducted ourselves in our respective consulships, than how we
obtained them.
[4]
I, on the first of January, delivered the senate and all
virtuous citizens from the fear of an agrarian law and of extravagant
largesses. I preserved the Campanian district, if it was not expedient that
it should be divided; if it was expedient, I reserved it for more
respectable authors of the division. I, in the case of Caius Rabirius, a man
on his trial for high treason, supported and defended against envy the
authority of the senate which had been interposed forty years before the
time of my consulship. I, at the cost of incurring great enmity myself, but
without any enmity falling on the senate, deprived some young
men—virtuous and brave men indeed but still men in such a peculiar
condition that if they had obtained magistracies they would have convulsed
the constitution of the republic of the opportunity of canvassing the
comitia.
[5]
By my patience and complaisant conduct I propitiated Antonius my colleague
eager for a province, and cherishing many designs injurious to the republic.
I in the public assembly renounced the province of Gaul, fully equipped and well appointed
with an army and with funds by the authority of the senate, which I had
taken in exchange from Antonius, because I thought it advantageous to the
republic at that time that I should do so in spite of the outcry raised by
the Roman people against my doing so. I ordered Lucius Catiline planning not
obscurely, but openly, the slaughter of the senate and the destruction of
the city, to depart from the city in order that you might be protected by
our walls from his designs from which our laws were insufficient to defend
us. I wrested from the nefarious hands of the conspirators the weapons which
in the last month of my consulship were aimed at the throats of the
citizens. I seized, and brought to light and extinguished the firebrands
which were already kindled for the conflagration of the city.
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