7.
O the hard lot of those, not only of those who govern, but even of those who save the
republic. Now, if Lucius Catiline, hemmed in and rendered powerless by my counsels, by my
toils, by my dangers, should on a sudden become alarmed, should change his designs, should
desert his friends, should abandon his design of making war, should change his path from this
course of wickedness and war, and betake himself to flight and exile, he will not be said to
have been deprived by me of the arms of his audacity, to have been astounded and terrified by
my diligence, to have been driven from his hope and from his enterprise, but, uncondemned and
innocent, to have been driven into banishment by the consul by threats and violence; and
there will be some who will seek to have him thought not worthless but unfortunate, and be
considered not a most active consul, but a most cruel tyrant.
[15]
I am not unwilling, O Romans, to endure this storm of false and unjust
unpopularity as long as the danger of this horrible and nefarious war is warded off from you.
Let him be said to be banished by me as long as he goes into banishment; but, believe me, he
will not go. I will never ask of the immortal gods, O Romans, for the sake of lightening my
own unpopularity, for you to hear that Lucius Catiline is leading an army of enemies, and is
hovering about in arms; but yet in three days you will hear it. And I much more fear that it
will be objected to me some day or other, that I have let him escape, rather than that I have
banished him. But when there are men who say he has been banished because he has gone away,
what would these men say if he had been put to death?
[16]
Although those men who keep saying that Catiline is going to Marseilles do not complain of this so much as they fear it; for there is not
one of them so inclined to pity, as not to prefer that he should go to Manlius rather than to
Marseilles. But he, if he had never before planned
what he is now doing, yet would rather be slain while living as a bandit, than live as an
exile; but now, when nothing has happened to him contrary to his own wish and
design,—except, indeed, that he has left Rome while we are alive,—let us wish rather that he may go into exile
than complain of it.
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