A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

440 The Revolution
done our duty to the state, if we can but escape his rage
and deadly darts. Long ago, Catiline, ought the consul to
have ordered your execution, and to have directed upon
your own head the ruin you have long been meditating
All hate
Catiline.
His country
pleads with
him.
against us all. . . .
For my part, were my slaves to discover such a dread of
me as your fellow-citizens express of you, I should think
it necessary to abandon my own house; and do you hesitate
to leave the city? Were I even wrongfully suspected, and
thereby rendered obnoxious to my countrymen, I would
sooner withdraw myself from public view than be beheld
with looks full of reproach and indignation. And do you,
whose conscience tells you that you are the object of a
universal, just, and long-merited hatred, delay a moment
to escape from the looks and presence of a people whose
eyes and senses can no longer endure you among them?
Should your parents dread and hate you, and resist all
your efforts to appease them, you would doubtless withdraw
from their sight.
But now your country, the common parent of us all,
hates and dreads you, and has long regarded you as a
parricide, intent on the purpose of destroying her. And
will you neither respect her authority, submit to her advice,
nor stand in awe of her power? Thus does she reason
with you, Catiline; thus does she, though silent, in some
manner address you: "Not an enormity has happened
author; not a
these many years but has had you for its
The murder of
crime has been perpetrated without you.
so many of our citizens, the oppression and the plunder of
our alHes has through you alone escaped punishment,
though carried on with unrestrained violence. You have
found means not only to trample on law and justice but
even to subvert and destroy them. Though this past