[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.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.