12.
To this holy address of the republic, and to the feelings of those men who entertain the
same opinion, I will make this short answer:—If, O conscript fathers, I thought it
best that Catiline should be punished with death, I would not have given the space of one
hour to this gladiator to live in. If, forsooth, those excellent men and most illustrious
cities not only did not pollute themselves, but even glorified themselves by the blood of
Saturninus, and the Gracchi, and Flaccus, and many others of old time, surely I had no cause
to fear lest for slaying this parricidal murderer of the citizens any unpopularity should
accrue to me with posterity. And if it did threaten me to ever so great a degree, yet I have
always been of the disposition to think unpopularity earned by virtue and glory, not
unpopularity.
[30]
Though there are some men in this body who either do not see what threatens, or dissemble
what they do see; who have fed the hope of Catiline by mild sentiments, and have strengthened
the rising conspiracy by not believing it; influenced by whose authority many, and they not
wicked, but only ignorant, if I punished him would say that I had acted cruelly and
tyranically. But I know that if he arrives at the camp of Manlius to which he is going, there
will be no one so stupid as not to see that there has been a conspiracy; no one so hardened
as not to confess it. But if this man alone were put to death, I know that this disease of
the republic would be only checked for awhile, not eradicated for ever. But if he banishes
himself; and takes with him all his friends, and collects at one point all the ruined men
from every quarter, then not only will this full-grown plague of the republic be extinguished
and eradicated, but also the root and seed of all future evils
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