Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (35 page)

[22] But why am I saying this? Do I imagine that
your
resolve could be broken? That
you
could come to your senses? That
you
could think of escape? That
you
could consider exile? How I wish the immortal gods would put
that
idea into your head! And yet, if my words did frighten you so much that you were driven to contemplate exile, I can see what a storm of unpopularity would break over me—not necessarily immediately, when the memory of your crimes was still fresh, but at a later date. It would be worth it, however, so long as the consequences only affected me, and did not put the state at risk. But that
your
character should be reformed, that
you
should be deterred by the penalties of the law, or that
you
should put your country before yourself—that is too much to ask. For you are not the man, Catiline, to be turned from disgrace by a sense of decency, or from danger by fear, or from madness by reason.

[23] Therefore go, as I have said often enough now. If I am your enemy, as you say I am, and your aim is to whip up hostility towards me, then go straight into exile. If you do this, it will be hard for me to endure what people will say about me; if you go into exile at the consul’s command, it will be hard for me to bear the burden of the odium that will fall on me. If, on the other hand, your aim is to enhance my glory and reputation, then leave with your desperate gang of criminals, take yourself off to Manlius, stir up the bad citizens, separate yourself off from the loyal ones, make war on your country, and revel in banditry and wickedness! If you do that, it will look not as if I have driven you into the arms of strangers, but as if you have been invited to go and join your friends.

[24] Yet why should I be urging you, when I already know that you have sent a force ahead to wait for you under arms at Forum Aurelium,
*
when I know that you have agreed a prearranged day with Manlius, and when I know that you have also sent ahead that silver eagle
*
to which you have dedicated a shrine at your house, and which I trust will bring only ruin and disaster to you and all your followers? How, after all, could you go without the object to which you used to pay homage each time you set out to commit a murder, when you would touch its altar with your sacrilegious right hand before using that same right hand straight afterwards to kill Roman citizens?

[25] You will go, at long last, where your unrestrained, insane ambition has long been driving you; nor will this cause you any regret, but, on the contrary, a sort of indescribable delight. It was for
madness such as this that nature created you, your own desire trained you, and fortune preserved you. Not only have you never wanted peace, but you have never wanted war either—unless it was a criminal one. Drawing on the worst of society, you have scraped together a gang of traitors, men entirely abandoned not just by fortune, but even by hope. [26] What delight you will take in their company, what joy you will experience, what pleasure you will revel in, seeing that from so sizeable a gathering you will be able neither to hear nor to see a single decent man! Those physical powers of yours
*
we hear so much about have set you up for a life of this kind: the ability to lie on the bare ground has prepared you not just for launching sexual assaults but for committing crime, the capacity to stay awake not just for cheating husbands in their sleep but for robbing unsuspecting people of their property. Now you have an opportunity to show off your celebrated capacity to endure hunger, cold, and the lack of every amenity—hardships which you will shortly find out have finished you off! [27] When I prevented you from attaining the consulship,
*
I at least managed to ensure that you would be in a position only to attack the country as an exile, not to devastate it as consul, and that the criminal enterprise you would undertake would only go under the name of banditry, and not war.

Now, conscript fathers, I want to avert and deflect a particular complaint that our country might—almost with reason—make against me. So please pay careful attention to what I am going to say, and store it deep inside your hearts and minds. Imagine that my country, which is much more precious to me than my own life, imagine that all Italy, imagine that the entire nation were to address me like this: ‘Marcus Tullius, what are you playing at? Are you going to permit the departure of a man whom you have discovered to be a public enemy, who you see will be a leader in war, who you are well aware is awaited in the enemy camp as their commander, a man who is an instigator of crime, the leader of a conspiracy, and the mobilizer of slaves
*
and bad citizens—so that it will look as if you have not driven him out of the city, but let him loose against it? Surely you are going to give orders that he be cast into chains, led away to execution, and made to suffer the ultimate penalty? [28] What on earth is stopping you? The tradition of our ancestors? But in this country it has very often been the case that even private citizens have punished dangerous citizens with death. Or is it the laws that have been passed
relating to the punishment of Roman citizens?
*
But at Rome people who have rebelled against the state have never retained the rights of citizens. Or are you afraid that history will judge you harshly? Although you are known only for what you have done yourself, and do not have distinguished ancestors to recommend you, the Roman people have nevertheless seen fit to raise you, and at so early an age, through all the magisterial offices and elevate you to the supreme power. Fine thanks you will be paying them in return, then, if you neglect the safety of your fellow-citizens through concern for your reputation or fear of any kind of danger! [29] But if you are afraid of being judged harshly, being criticized for showing severity and resolution is no more to be dreaded than being criticized for criminal neglect of duty. Or, when Italy is ravaged by war, her cities destroyed, and her homes on fire, do you imagine that your own reputation will be exempt from the flames of hatred?’

To these most solemn words of our country, and to all individuals who share the feelings she expresses, I will make this brief answer. Had I judged that punishing Catiline with death was the best course of action, conscript fathers, I should not have given that gladiator a single hour of life to enjoy. For if it is the case that our most distinguished and illustrious citizens did not merely not damage their reputations when they killed Saturninus, the Gracchi, Flaccus,
*
and many other figures of the past, but actually enhanced them, then certainly I had no need to fear that killing this murderer of Roman citizens would do any harm in the future to my own reputation. But even if there was considerable danger of its doing me harm, I have always been of the opinion that unpopularity earned by doing what is right is not unpopularity at all, but glory.

[30] And yet there are not a few members of this order who either fail to see what is hanging over us or pretend not to see it. These people have fed Catiline’s hopes by their feeble expressions of opinion, and have given strength to the growing conspiracy by their reluctance to believe in its existence. Their authority is such that, had I punished Catiline, many people—not just traitors, but people who do not know any better—would say that I had acted in a cruel and tyrannical manner. But as it is, I know that if he goes to Manlius’ camp, as he means to, there will be no one so stupid as not to see that the conspiracy exists, and no one so wicked as not to acknowledge that it exists.

But if he, and he alone, is killed, I know that this cancer in the state can be repressed only for a short time: it cannot be suppressed permanently. On the other hand, if he removes himself and takes all his followers with him, and brings together in one place all the other castaways he has collected from here and there, we will be able to wipe out and expunge not only this cancer which has grown up in our midst, but also the root and seed of future ills.

[31] We have been living for a long time now, conscript fathers, amid the dangers of a conspiracy and the attempts on our lives, but somehow or other all this criminal activity and this long-standing violence and frenzy has come to a head during my tenure of the consulship. If, out of so many brigands, only this man here is removed, we will perhaps be under the impression, briefly, that we have been freed from our fear and anxiety. But the danger will remain, enclosed deep within the veins and vitals of the state. It is like when people who are seriously ill toss and turn with a burning fever: if they have a drink of cold water, they initially seem to find relief, but are afterwards much more seriously and violently ill than they were before. In the same way, this disease from which our country is suffering will initially seem to abate if this man is punished, but will then break out much more violently, as the other conspirators will still be alive.

[32] Therefore let the traitors depart. Let them detach themselves from the good citizens, gather together in one place, and, as I have said many times now, be separated from us by the city wall. Let them stop attempting to assassinate the consul in his own home, thronging round the tribunal of the city praetor,
*
besieging the senate-house with swords, and preparing fire-arrows and torches to burn the city. Finally, let it be inscribed on the forehead of every citizen what he thinks about his country. I promise you this, conscript fathers, that we the consuls will show such conscientiousness, you will show such authority, the Roman equestrians will show such courage, and all loyal citizens will show such solidarity that, once Catiline has departed, you will see everything revealed, exposed, crushed, and punished.

[33] With omens such as these, Catiline, and for the sake of the survival of the state, the death and destruction of yourself, and the ruin of those who have linked themselves to you in every type of crime and murder: be off to your sacrilegious and wicked war! And
you, Jupiter, who were established by the same auspices as those by which Romulus founded this city, whom we rightly call the ‘Stayer’
*
of this city and empire, may you drive him and his associates away from your temple and the other temples, away from the buildings and walls of the city, and away from the lives and fortunes of all the citizens! And on these men who are the opponents of decent citizens, the enemies of their country, brigands of Italy, and linked together in an unholy alliance and syndicate of crime, on these, living and dead, may you inflict everlasting punishment!

[1] At long last, citizens, Lucius Catilina,
*
crazed with recklessness, panting with criminality, treacherously plotting the destruction of his country, and menacing you and this city with fire and the sword—this criminal we have expelled from Rome; or released; or followed with our farewells as he was leaving of his own accord. He has gone, departed, cleared off, escaped.
*
No longer will that grotesque monster plan the demolition of our city walls from inside those very walls. And we have indisputably beaten the one man who is at the head of this civil war. No longer, then, will that dagger of his be twisted between our ribs. In the Campus Martius, in the forum, in the senate-house, and in our own homes we will have nothing to fear. When he was driven from the city, he was dislodged from his point of vantage. So now we will be fighting a proper war in the open against an external enemy, with nothing to stop us. Without a doubt we destroyed him and won a magnificent victory when we turned him from secret plots to open banditry. [2] He has not taken with him, as he wished, a dagger covered in blood; he has departed with me still alive; I have wrenched his sword from his hand; and he has left the citizens unharmed and the city still standing—so just think of the sense of grief that must have overwhelmed and crushed him! He now lies prostrate, citizens, and realizes that he has been struck down and laid low. Again and again, surely, he is turning his eyes back towards this city, bewailing the fact that it has been snatched from his jaws. The city, on the other hand, seems to me delighted that it has vomited forth such a pestilence and spewed it out.

[3] But it may be that some of you will take the view that ought really to be the view of everyone, and criticize me severely for what my speech boasts of and glories in—the fact that I did not arrest so lethal an enemy, but allowed him to escape. However, the blame for that, citizens, lies not with me, but with the circumstances. Lucius Catilina ought long ago to have paid the supreme punishment and been executed, as the tradition of our ancestors, the strictness of my office, and the national interest demanded of me. But how many people do you think there were who refused to believe my allegations, how many who even spoke up for the offenders, how many
who were so stupid as to imagine that the conspiracy did not exist, and how many who were so wicked as to give it their support? If I judged that by removing Lucius Catilina I could free you completely from danger, I would long ago have risked not only my popularity but even my life to remove him. [4] But at that time not even all of you were sufficiently convinced of the existence of the conspiracy, and I saw that, if I punished him with the death he deserved, I would make myself so unpopular that I would not be in a position to take action against his accomplices. Instead, therefore, I brought matters to a point where you would be able to fight in the open, and also to see clearly who the enemy was.

As to how frightened we ought to be of such an enemy now that he is in the open, you will be able to divine my own feelings on this, citizens, from the fact that I am disappointed that he has taken so few of his fellow conspirators from the city with him. Indeed, I wish that he had marched out of Rome at the head of his entire force! I find that he took with him Tongilius,
*
a man he had first had sexual relations with when Tongilius was a boy, and also Publicius and Minucius, men whose unpaid restaurant bills were hardly likely to destabilize the state. But those he has left behind are quite another matter. What debts they have, what power, what noble birth!