hands to heaven, mourned over their infants, made constant inquiries, trembled at every thing, and, forgetting their pride and their pleasures, felt nothing but alarm for themselves and their country.
Yet the unrelenting spirit of Catiline persisted in the same purposes, notwithstanding the precautions that were adopted against him, and though he himself was accused by Lucius Paullus under the Plautian law.[159] At last, with a view to dissemble, and under pretense of clearing his character, as if he had been provoked by some attack, he went into the senate-house. It was then that Marcus Tullius, the consul, whether alarmed at his presence, or fired with indignation against him, delivered that splendid speech, so beneficial to the republic, which he afterward wrote and published.[160]
When Cicero sat down, Catiline, being prepared to pretend ignorance of the whole matter, entreated, with downcast looks and suppliant voice, that "the Conscript Fathers would not too hastily believe any thing against him;" saying "that he was sprung from such a family, and had so ordered his life from his youth, as to have every happiness in prospect; and that they were not to suppose that he, a patrician, whose services to the Roman people, as well as those of his ancestors, had been so numerous, should want to ruin the state, when Marcus Tullius, a mere adopted citizen of Rome,[161] was eager to preserve it." When he was proceeding to add other invectives, they all raised an outcry against him, and called him an enemy and a traitor.[162] Being thus exasperated, "Since I am encompassed by enemies," he exclaimed,[163] "and driven to desperation, I will extinguish the flame kindled around me in a general ruin."
XXXII He then hurried from the senate to his own house; and then, after much reflection with himself, thinking that, as his plots against the consul had been unsuccessful, and as he knew the city to be secured from fire by the watch, his best course would be to augment his army, and make provision for the war before the legions could be raised, he set out in the dead of night, and with a few attendants, to the camp of Manlius. But he left in charge to Lentulus and Cethegus, and others of whose prompt determination he was assured, to strengthen the interests of their party in every possible way, to forward the plots against the consul, and to make arrangements for a massacre, for firing the city, and for other destructive operations of war; promising that he himself would shortly advance on the city with a large army.
During the course of these proceedings at Rome, Caius Manlius dispatched some of his followers as deputies to Quintus Marcius Rex, with directions to address him[164] to the following effect:
XXXIII. "We call gods and men to witness, general, that we have taken up arms neither to injure our country, nor to occasion peril to any one, but to defend our own persons from harm; who, wretched and in want, have been deprived most of us, of our homes, and all of us of our character and property, by the oppression and cruelty of usurers; nor has any one of us been allowed, according to the usage of our ancestors, to have the benefit of the law,[165] or, when our property was lost to keep our persons free. Such has been the inhumanity of the usurers and of the praetor.[166]
Often have your forefathers, taking compassion on the commonalty at Rome, relieved their distress by decrees;[167] and very lately, within our own memory, silver, by reason of the pressure of debt, and with the consent of all respectable citizens, was paid with brass.[168]