2.
[4]
The senate once passed a decree that Lucius Opimius, the consul, should take care that the
republic suffered no injury. Not one night elapsed. There was put to death, on some mere
suspicion of disaffection, Caius Gracchus, a man whose family had borne the most unblemished
reputation for many generations. There was slain Marcus Fulvius, a man of consular rank, and
all his children. By a like decree of the senate the safety of the republic was entrusted to
Caius Marius and Lucius Valerius, the consuls. Did not the vengeance of the republic, did not
execution overtake Lucius Saturninus, a tribune of the people, and Caius Servilius, the
praetor, without the delay of one single day? But we, for these twenty days have been
allowing the edge of the senate's authority to grow blunt, as it were. For we are in
possession of a similar decree of the senate, but we keep it locked up in its
parchment—buried, I may say, in the sheath; and according to this decree you ought,
O Catiline, to be put to death this instant. You live,—and you live, not to lay
aside, but to persist in your audacity.
I wish, O conscript fathers, to be merciful; I wish not to appear negligent amid such
danger to the state; but I do now accuse myself of remissness and culpable inactivity.
[5]
A camp is pitched in Italy, at the entrance of Etruria, in hostility to the republic; the number of
the enemy increases every day; and yet the general of that camp, the leader of those enemies,
we see within the walls—yes, and even in the senate, —planning every day
some internal injury to the republic. 1 If, O Catiline, I should
now order you to be arrested, to be put to death, I should, I suppose, have to fear lest all
good men should say that I had acted tardily, rather than that any one should affirm that I
acted cruelly. But yet this, which ought to have been done long since, I have good reason for
not doing as yet; I will put you to death, then, when there shall be not one person possible
to be found so wicked, so abandoned, so like yourself, as not to allow that it has been
rightly done.
[6]
As long as one person exists who can dare to
defend you, yet shall live; but you shall live as you do now, surrounded by my many and
trusty guards, so that you shall not be able to stir one finger against the republic: many
eyes and ears shall still observe and watch you, as they have hitherto done, though you shall
not perceive them.
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1 This is the same incident that is the subject of the preceding oration in defence of Rabirius.
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