[28]
Frightened out of his wits, he flies from the senate
with a mind and countenance less agitated than it would have been a few
years before, if he had fallen in with a crowd of his creditors. He convenes
an assembly. He, the consul, addresses them in such a speech as even
Catiline himself, if he had been victorious, would never have
delivered. He said “that men were greatly mistaken if they thought
that the senate had any power in the republic; and that the Roman knights
should suffer severely for that day on which, in my consulship, they had
appeared with their swords on the Capitoline
Hill: that the time had come for those who had been in
fear” (he evidently meant the conspirators) “to avenge
themselves.” If he had said no more than this, he would have been
worthy of the last extremity of punishment; for a mischievous speech of a
consul can of itself undermine the republic. But see now what he did.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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