CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Shortly after his first oration against Catilina, Marcus Tullius Cicero was lying on his bed sleepless, at midnight. But the city, though quieter than at midday, still murmured and thundered distantly like a restless Titan enduring nightmares. Marcus’ eyes were dry with strain and exhaustion. The faintest moonlight fell through an open fold at the curtained window and lay on the opposite wall. He watched it without awareness. Then all at once it glowed brighter and brighter, and his sharp attention was captured and he half-raised himself on his elbow. Moment by moment it brightened, became sharper, until it was a face. Marcus’ heart began to beat with mingled dread and fear. The features became clearer, and then it was his father’s face, not the face of Tullius in his age but the countenance of Tullius in his youth as Marcus had known him as a child. He saw the limpid brown eyes, the anxious and tender smile, the smooth brown hair and thin throat.

“Marcus!” exclaimed the apparition in an urgent voice. Marcus could not reply. The face came closer to him and now Marcus could see the outlines, very dimly, of shoulders and robe.

“Marcus! Flee Rome at once!” Shadowy hands were lifted, as if pleading.

“I cannot desert my country,” Marcus whispered.

I am dreaming, he thought. Swiftly he glanced about his room and saw the vague outlines of his furniture, the misty oblong of his window. He looked back at his father and felt a pang of grief.

“Your country, and mine, was lost even before I was born,” said the vision mournfully. “The Republic was dying when my father came from the womb. Flee, Marcus, and end your days in peace and in safety, for the wicked will triumph as always they have done, and will murder you if you remain.”

“I cannot desert Rome,” Marcus said. “No, not even if I die for it.”

The apparition was silent. It appeared to be listening intently to voices of others unseen. Then it lifted its shadowy hands in blessing and disappeared.

Marcus came to himself with a violent start and found himself wet with sweat. The faint moonshine lingered on the wall. “I have been dreaming,” he said aloud. He shivered. He rose and then for the first time he lighted a votive candle to his father’s memory and felt a shock of sorrow such as he never felt before for Tullius. Yet, he was comforted in spite of his Roman skepticism. It was good to know that the dead still loved the living, and that they guarded them and prayed for them. He pondered, remembering the apparition’s words. He had always known he was in danger; now the danger was desperate for all he was hailed as a hero and the guards were doubled about his house. Always, the assassin waited, the quiet and patient and deadly man, unnoticed in a crowd, ready to strike as swiftly as a viper. Or, those very same mobs who hailed the hero today destroyed him tomorrow in their incontinent capriciousness and tempers. What man could trust men? A brave man rejoiced to give his life for his country if it availed that country. But it never did.

Cicero delivered the second and third oration against Catilina, who was not present. It was Cicero’s intention to give his countrymen the whole history of the conspiracy, and their great part in it, for their apathy, complacence, tendency to hope for the best, optimism, and tolerance of villains and enemies of the State. “Too long have we said to ourselves, ‘Intolerance of another’s politics is barbarous and not to be countenanced in a civilized country. Are we not free? Shall a man be denied his right to speak under the law which established that right?’ I tell you that freedom does not mean the freedom to exploit law in order to destroy it! It is not freedom which permits the Trojan Horse to be wheeled within the gates, and those within it to be heard in the name of tolerating a different point of view! He who is not for Rome and Roman law and Roman liberty is against Rome. He who espouses tyranny and oppression and the old dead despotisms is against Rome. He who plots against established authority and incites the populace to violence is against Rome. He cannot ride two horses at the same time: He cannot be for lawful ordinances and for an alien conspiracy at one and the same moment! One is a Roman or not a Roman!”*

His own secretary, to whom he had taught his invented shorthand, wrote furiously with the other scribes. Cicero spoke with passionate force; he felt he was not only addressing the Senate and the people of Rome, whom he prayed would remember his words, but generations to come. “Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty! Our Constitution speaks of the ‘general welfare of the people.’ Under the phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.”

Always Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, and Clodius, and many of their friends, were present to hear the impassioned Cicero, and everyone glanced at them to see their nods of grave approval and thought, In these defenders of the people we see the friends of our hero, Cicero. He speaks for them. Cicero thought: Mountebanks! Would I could denounce you also before the faces of those against whom you have conspired!

Among those who listened to him with sincerity and with a burning heart was Marcus Porcius Cato, grandson of the fiery old patriot and Censor; a philosopher, for all his youth, and known to the reading public as “Uticensis.” He was a tribune and one of the leaders of the Senatorial aristocracy and a devoted admirer of Cicero. He was also a man of known probity and virtue as well as an eloquent essayist and politician. It was he who persuaded the cautious Cicero—who knew how dangerous was the swamp over which he was now treading—to arrest some of the lieutenants of the absent Catilina, such as Cethegus, Gabinius, Coeparius, Lentulus, and Statilus, patricians all and conspiritors all, who had remained in the city to show their superb contempt of Cicero. “Minor rascals,” Cato had said, “but they must be arrested lest the people think you impotent, dear Marcus. They will say you are all brave words, and will begin to wonder why, in spite of your power as Consul, these known enemies of the State remain free. They will begin to suggest among themselves that they are not so dangerous after all, and that you are a mere noisy demagogue. Yes, I know you fear to precipitate chaos. But there are times when one must confront that danger for the sake of one’s country.”

The prudent Cicero hesitated. It was his liability of nature, which gave him both strength and weakness, to consider all sides of an act before committing himself to it. Sometimes this resulted in total paralysis. He remembered those occasions. So now he resolutely struck at Catilina’s lieutenants, some of whom were relatives of the Senators themselves, and had them arrested and thrown into prison as conspirators against Rome. Romans went mad with speculation and with praise of Cicero, that he dared affront the mighty in their name. Many of the Senators were enraged. Some of them went to Crassus and Caesar and laid infuriated complaints against this “impudent new man, this Chick-pea, this country vulgarian, this Pleb! How long are we to be affronted by his insolence?”

Caesar said mildly, “You have forgotten. He was elected by the people, with the assistance of many patriotic Senators. They love him, one and all. He has the power to do what he has done—though I deplore it.”

One night when Caesar was in his library trying to read, but overcome by foreboding and restlessness, his overseer came to him and whispered that the noble patrician, Lucius Sergius Catilina, was without and urgently desired to converse with him. Caesar’s antic face paled at this dangerous insolence and this threat to himself. But he controlled himself and ordered that Catilina be brought to his library. He then quickly drew the curtains upon his windows, which looked out upon the pearly snow illumined by the moon. He also loosened his dagger in its sheath. And while he waited he pondered and plucked his lower lip with his fingers.

“Greetings, Caesar!” cried Catilina as he entered, throwing back the hood of his cloak. His beautiful and depraved face was alight with dark exultation. He held out his shapely and jeweled hand. Caesar gazed at it a moment, then took it. It seemed feverish to him, and tremulous, as though Catilina was vibrating with inner fire. Catilina, without an invitation, flung himself in a chair; his feet rested deep in the fur rug that covered the marble floor. Caesar turned to the wine he had ordered and slowly filled a goblet for himself and another for Catilina. He gave the goblet to his unwelcome guest and looked over the rim of his own at the other, whose expression grew more exultant moment by moment.

“Why are you here, Lucius, you audacious man? Do you not know that Rome is dangerous for you?”

“It was the city of my fathers before the Ciceroni ever saw it!” exclaimed Catilina. “It was the city of my fathers before the Caesares ever saw it! Shall Rome be deprived of her son?” There was profound derision in his voice and a passion which he could not control.

His compelling blue eyes fixed themselves on Caesar. “Dear friend,” he said in a deadly and caressing voice, “dear friend, sweet friend, faithful friend! Most trusted friend! I have come to thank you for your noble support, for your tears in my behalf.”

Caesar gazed at him in silence, though he moved his hand as though sweeping away the vicious mockery of the other.

“Considering your valorous courage, your undying friendship for me, I may be inclined to mercy—later,” said Catilina, and he laughed a little and took a long drink from his goblet.

“It is very gracious of you, Lucius,” said Caesar with a faint smile. “But I doubt you will be forced to that consideration. Take my advice at once. Leave Rome. Cicero has been mild; he could have ordered your arrest and your execution. Do not tempt the Fates again.”

“Ha!” cried Catilina. “Do you not know the Fates are with me?” He leaned toward Caesar now with vehemence glowing on his face. “I came to exult over you, Caesar, faithless friend, treacherous enemy.”

Caesar was silent. Should he tell Catilina that Curius’ mistress, Fulvia, had betrayed all to Cicero only that day? For a large price, a large price indeed, for she had wearied of Curius’ promises and boasts and she was no longer young and no longer rich.

Catilina continued to speak in his muscial but disordered tones. “I am ready to strike,” he said. “Do you think you can halt me, you, Crassus, all of you, and that unspeakable Chick-pea?”

Caesar said, “Tomorrow, Cicero speaks again against you in the Temple of Concord, before the Senate. He may ask for your arrest and your execution. I beg of you, flee at once as he advised you before. I thought him temperate then—”

“He was afraid! He dared not lay a hand upon me, for fear of me! Was it temperance indeed, or prudence out of terror? But I tell you now, Caesar, that should a single hair of my head be harmed you shall go down with me, all of you. I have warned you before. I warn you now.”

Caesar was alarmed, not at his words but at his aspect. He had always suspected that Catilina was mad; it was a disease of the family.

“I shall appear tomorrow at the Temple of Concord,” said Catilina, “and I shall speak to the Senators and my fellow great soldiers, and we shall destroy Cicero in one blast of laughter.”

“You cannot appear!” said Caesar, not believing this deranged folly. He was almost certain that if Catilina appeared the Senate would agree to his execution. But there were many imponderables to consider, and man could be trusted only to do the unexpected. Catilina had a strange and brilliant eloquence of his own, and he would speak to the hearts of the proud Senators, who secretly despised the middle-class Cicero. If Catilina were exonerated of conspiracy then he would continue to inspire his dark and violent and lusting underground to attack Rome, until at last she was destroyed. If Catilina were condemned, then that underground might rise in rebellion, and Rome might be destroyed after all. But malefactors by very nature were cowardly; the lesser danger lay with them, if Catilina were eliminated. The body did not operate without the mind.

“I shall appear,” said Catilina, gloating.

“Then you will surely be condemned, for you will affront the Senate by your very appearnace, after they believed you had left Rome forever, and in peace.”

“I shall not be condemned, sweet lying Caesar. I shall have an advocate.”

“And who is this reckless advocate?”

Catilina burst out laughing. He rose and refilled his goblet. He lifted it and toasted his unwilling host. “You, Caesar.”

“I?”

“You.” Catilina drank with enjoyment. Then he was no longer laughing. He hurled the jeweled goblet from him and against a marble wall and it crashed into fragments. He lost what little control he had over himself. He advanced on Caesar and held his clenched fist under the other’s chin. For the first time Caesar felt loathing for him and wished he had poisoned the wine.

“You have told me before, sweet and treacherous friend, that Cicero knows all, and the parts of all of you in our original plot, and that you laid it all before him, for the sake of Rome. But there are many virtuous and patriotic and simple men in that Senate. They do not know. I shall enlighten them, if you refuse to be my advocate! What then, great Caesar, noble soldier? Do you think Crassus will save you, come to your rescue, to the rescue of Pompey and Piso and Curius and Clodius, and others of our brotherhood? He will consign you to death with me. I will not die alone.”

He laughed in Caesar’s face with delight. “Do not think to have me murdered when I leave here, my devoted companion. I have a large guard waiting outside.”

Caesar’s white mouth contracted. A beautiful Alexandrian lamp began to smoke on a distant table and Julius went to it with pretended concern and trimmed it. Lazy wisps of smoke rolled about the library and he watched them idly. But he was thinking with intense rapidity. There was much in Catilina’s threats, too much for any complacency. It was useless to appeal to Catilina’s reason, for he had none. It was absurd to appeal to any patriotism, for he had none. But Caesar said:

“You, alone, abandoned our original plan, for you have no patience, Lucius. Had you listened to us you would still be one of our companions, would be with us when we seize Rome in an orderly fashion. But—”

However, he halted at Catilina’s wild gesture of contempt. The blue eyes had lost what little sanity they had ever possessed and the face was contorted. “Hark to me, Caesar, for the last time! I care nothing for Rome. I care nothing for your law and order, whimpering echoes of a contemptible Cicero! Consider him! He believes that a virtuous man of good will can be recognized even by the dullest or the most disreputable, and be respected. He has never known, that ridiculous lawyer, that virtue only arouses the derision of others, for virtue cannot be understood by the ordinary mind or the soul of a slave or by a man whose soul resides in his purse or his belly. So virtue receives its fitting reward—exile or death, or, at the very least the taunting cackle of the multitude.”

“Then you,” said Caesar, “grant him virtue and speak with disgust of those who do not respect or admire that virtue.”

“I detest his virtue, which builds dull cities and dull societies and infamous peace. Do you know why I was born, Caesar?” The glittering eyes moved closer to Caesar who felt a rising alarm at the sight of them. “I was born to destroy the base and the contemptible! Ah, you would speak of Rome! Observe our country, Caesar. Shall I recount her virtues to you, her dirty little vices, her gross and slavish perversions? Shall this city of offal be permitted to live? No! I shall destroy it.

“Destruction is not less godly than creation. If a sculptor is offended by the ugliness of his statue he will demolish it with his hammer. But Chick-pea would have that ugliness remain for the stupid reason that it has been created, that it is. But I have greater plans! This Rome shall be cleansed and demolished by fire, and on its cooling embers I will build a white city of marble, brighter than the sun, where a slave shall forever remain a slave, and a patrician shall be forever a patrician, and an emperor an emperor. I shall use the very mobs I will later destroy to attain that felicity and you, Caesar, shall call from your ashes: ‘Well done, Savior of civilization!’”

“I am sure that you have ranted so to your freedmen and malefactors and malcontents and old, disgruntled veterans,” said Caesar with irony.

Catilina laughed and his white teeth blazed in his face. “No, but should I tell them they would be joyful to die that Rome might be cured of their pestilence!”

He rose and put his fur cloak over his stately shoulders and he smiled down at Caesar. “Tomorrow, my noble advocate, you will defend me, for do you not love me, and are we not blood brothers through our oath, and are we not both patricians?”

After he was gone Caesar hastily summoned a slave and sent a message to Cicero that Catilina would appear the next day at the Temple of Concord. He sent similar messages to Crassus and the others. Then he sat until the blue dawn appeared at his windows and considered what he must do.

He must die, thought Marcus Tullius Cicero, on his way to the Temple of Concord in the Forum. The time for prudence, for temperance, has gone. He must die and his followers with him. There is no other way to save Rome—if indeed Rome can now be saved at all. Oh, why did I delay! I had the murderer in my hand and let him escape. Indeed, I have no valor; I am a temporizer; I am a lawyer; I hate violence and bloody deeds and death; I love law. But sometimes all these are pusillanimous when your country is in desperate danger. Then you must strike or watch your prudence destroy what you have striven to save.

The Senate was meeting in the Temple to consider the fate of Catilina’s lieutenants whom Cicero had arrested. By now they must know that Catilina himself would be present. Rumor always ran like lightning in Rome, from the palaces on the Palatine to the gutters of the Trans-Tiber. So Cicero, accompanied by his brother and the latter’s legion, was not surprised to find the Forum filled again with a huge mob in spite of the wintry snow and the bitter wind that blew from the Campagna. The first sun was just striking the highest red roofs on the hills though the lower city still fumed with mist and dimness.

I am tired, thought Marcus. I am weary unto death. I have struggled for a whole lifetime for my country, and it is now as if I have only just joined the battle. Will it never cease? No, said the sober blood of his ancestors in his veins. It will never cease so long as some men are ambitious and many men are slaves in their spirits.

The Senate was already awaiting him, to hear his fourth oration against Catilina and the enemies of Rome. He wore, again, his white woolen toga and his staff of office, but all noted the marks of strain on his pale face and that, even in these past few weeks, his hair had grown grayer and that his wonderful eyes were sunken. But his step was firm and slow as he stood in the middle of the Temple, after he had first made obeisance at the altar and had lit a votive light. (He had watched the fugitive light waver, as if it were deciding his fate, and then it had flared into brilliance and he bowed again and returned to the center of the Temple.)

He stood in silence, thinking. The awful picture was confused, swampish and full of stench to him and flitting shadows. Could the people be less confused than himself? He must make the darkness more clear to them as he must make it for himself, for otherwise all was lost. He lifted his eyes and searched in the crowded and smoky gloom for Catilina. The sun had gone behind the clouds; only candlelight and torches dimly illuminated the winter dusk. Then one large candle flared up and Cicero saw Catilina, grand as before, in his white fur coat and his jewels and with his beautiful, idle smile. He was seated near the door of the Temple, as if he had only strolled negligently within to hear an unimportant priest recite his dull office. All at once Cicero remembered his childhood and the tales Noë ben Joel had told him of the terrible adversary of man—Satan, he who was an archangel of death and terror and destruction, but an archangel still full of awesome beauty and ghastly splendor.

Cicero began to speak calmly and slowly, but in a voice like an echoing trumpet. He addressed the Senators, fixing them with his strongly glowing eyes.

“My lords, we are here today to discuss the fate of the lieutenants of Lucius Sergius Catilina, the patrician and the soldier and the conspirator against the peace and freedom of our country. And I am here as the advocate of Rome, as often I appeared as the advocate of many before, who were in the most frightful of dangers—death.

“I perceive, my lords, that the faces and the eyes of all present are turned toward me. I perceive that you are anxious not only as to the danger to yourselves and the country, supposing that danger to be averted, but even to the personal danger to me.” Cicero smiled sadly, raised his hands and dropped them. “What is danger to me, when my country’s fate is far more important?

“Pleasant to me indeed in the midst of misfortunes, and gratifying in the midst of sorrow, is this exhibition of your good will. But, by the love of heaven, cast that good will aside, forget my own safety and think only of yourselves, your children and Rome! I am Consul of Rome, my lords, for whom neither the Forum in which all justice is centered nor the Campus, which is hallowed by the auspices of the consular elections, nor the Senate, which is the asylum of the world, nor the home, which is the universal sanctuary, nor the bed which is dedicated to rest, no, nor even this honored seat of office, has ever been free from peril of death and from secret treason.

“I have held my peace as too much; I have patiently endured much. I have conceded much; I have remedied much with a certain amount of suffering to myself—though the reason for alarm was yours. At the present moment, if it was the will of heaven that the crowning work of my Consulship should be the preservation of you and the Roman people from a most cruel massacre, of your wives and children and the Vestal Virgins from a most grievous persecution, of the preservation of God in our nation, against those who would exile Him, of the temples and shrines and this most fair fatherland of us all from the most hideous flames, of the whole of Italy from war and devastation, let me now confront whatever terrors fortune has in store for me alone!”

He flung out his arms and exposed his throat as if offering himself as a sacrifice for Rome, as if offering himself for her safety and redemption. It was a most sincere and a most moving gesture, and the Senators stirred on their chairs. But Catilina laughed openly if without making a sound. His luminous eyes searched the rows of the Senators, and he appeared to be satisfied. He folded his brown arms over his breast and fixed his derisive gaze on Cicero.

Cicero continued in his ardent voice: “Lords, take thought for yourselves, provide for your fatherland, preserve yourselves, your wives, your children, and your properties, defend the name and existence of the Roman people! Strain every nerve for the preservation of the State, look in every quarter for the storms which will burst upon you if you do not see them in time. We have seized the lieutenants of Catilina—who profanes the name of Rome by his very presence among us today—these men who have remained behind in Rome to burn down the city, to massacre you all, and to welcome Catilina in triumph. They are inciting the slave population, the dark and bloody underground of criminals and the perverse in the city, the disaffected, the traitors, in Catilina’s behalf. In short, they have formed the design that by the murder of us all no single man shall be left even to weep for the name of the Roman people and to lament the downfall of this great nation. All these facts have been reported by the informers, confessed by the accused, themselves, and adjudged true by this august body of the Senate. You have already declared them guilty!”

Some of the Senators looked at Crassus who pursed his lips with solemn righteousness and nodded. Few noticed that Julius Caesar sat frowning and in a state of abstraction.

Cicero raised his arm and pointed at Catilina and cried out, “Behold the terror of Rome, the traitor, the murderer, the evil spirit who has designed our doom! Look upon his face and see all crime branded upon it! I know him well, lords. I have watched him for many years. I knew his plots, and sensed them.

“I saw long ago that great recklessness was rife in this state, and that some new agitation was proceeding, and that some mischief was brewing. But even I, who know Catilina so well, never fully imagined that Roman citizens were engaged in a conspiracy so vast and so destructive as this. At the present moment, whatever the matter is, in whatever direction your feelings and your sentiments incline, you must come to a decision before sunset. You see how serious an affair has been brought to your notice; if you think that only a few men are implicated in it, you are gravely mistaken. The seeds of this evil conspiracy have been carried further than you think; the contagion has not only spread through Italy but it has crossed the Alps and has already infected many of the provinces in its insidious progress.”

Now Cicero raised his voice until it echoed against the walls of the Temple, and his whole slender body shook with indignant passion and his eyes shone with stern anger. Catilina lifted his fine head abruptly and stared at him as if struck.

“It cannot possibly be stamped out by suspense of judgment or judicious pleas for tolerance of opinions,’ and procrastination! However you decide to deal, you must take severe measures at once, without delay—in the name of Rome, in the name of Rome’s freedom, in the name of all that has made Rome free and great!”*

One of the Senators, after a sharp silence in the Temple, addressed himself to Cicero. “What is your desire for this body?”

Cicero did not answer immediately. He looked with sudden bitterness on Crassus and company, on the half-hidden face of Caesar, into the eyes of the quiet Pompey and the mobile face of Clodius. He then looked fully at Catilina. He raised his arm and pointed again at the beautiful patrician. In a great voice like the stroke of a drum he cried out:

“I demand death for this man’s lieutenants, whom we now hold in custody, and I demand death for this renegade, this would-be destroyer of Rome, this traitor, this Vandal, this defamer of our name, this enemy, this tiger in human form, this panderer to the base and unspeakable—in short, Lucius Sergius Catilina!”

Then, as before, the people without the Temple raised a mighty and terrible cry: “Death to Catilina! Death to the traitors!”

The Senators listened. Some of them turned to neighbors and whispered, “Cicero has inflamed the mob. It is not the people of Rome who speak.” And some replied, “Do you have the ear of the people and their voice? Or, is it your own only?”

The interior of the Temple was utterly silent now, as if filled by statues who sat and stood in the brown and fiery gloom and the smoke of incense and torches, a white cheek caught here and there in a flicker of flame, or folded hands, or a still shoulder, or a pale carved mouth. It was like a dusky cave inside, where the Fates lurked at their thread and their looms in total quiet. But outside the pale blue light of winter gleamed on the cloaked heads of the assembled people and revealed their dark faces and vehement eyes and the tossing of their upraised hands.

The challenge of death had been uttered in the Temple. None looked at Catilina in his contemptuous and smiling splendor. All looked at Cicero standing in the center of the tessellated floor, tall and slender and white-robed, a graying man with a white and resolute face and eyes like changing jewels. He began to speak again, and his voice though strong shook like an oak in a storm.

“I, lords, am an advocate, a lawyer, and was so long before I was a politician or even became interested in politics. I have been Praetor of Rome. I am now the Consul. In all these years of public service I have defended men from impending sentence of death. As Praetor I upheld the laws of Rome but did not ask that any man be made to suffer the final humiliation. As Consul, I have asked no magistrate, nor this august body of the Senate, to condemn any man.

“Death is the great ignominy. We sing of the death of heroes, and we honor their memory. But death in many ways is a sacrilege against life, for it mortifies the restraint of our senses. We speak of the noble visages of the dead. We do not mention the sudden loosening of the sphincter muscles which flood the expired flesh with dung and urine. We do not mention it for we instinctively have reverence for life and avert our faces from the mortifications which death inflicts upon it. All our being is revolted at this abasement of a man, this open scorn of nature upon him as if she has declared, ‘He is no better than the beast of the field and dies as voluptuously shameful, with a spewing out of what is contained in his bowels and his bladder.’

“But we know that man is no beast of the field, for God has implanted in us a horror of death, the most powerful aversion against it, a rebellion of our senses against its humiliation. That which animated the flesh, though departed, has left a sanctity upon it and though we cannot evade nature’s last vile contempt for what has always defied her, we keep our decent silence. Therefore, in our decency, we hesitate against condemning a man to the remorseless processes of nature, for when one man is mortified all other men are disgraced also. This to me is worse than death itself.

“Nevertheless, men are often forced to defend themselves, their families and their countries. We are often forced to surmount our instinctive loathing for death and its obscenities. Only a man bereft of all manhood can rejoice in the extinction of another, even an enemy. Only a beast can feel triumphant at the sight of a bloody battlefield, even if his own nation has conquered. The true man, surveying that battlefield, must bow his head and pray for the souls of friend and foe alike—for both were men.

“It is with no malice, therefore, and no exultation, that I ask that this august body of the Senate condemn Lucius Sergius Catilina to death, and his lieutenants with him. In their final ignominy even just men must share. But our country is greater than we. All that Rome is is nobler than any individual man. We are faced with the most direful of choices: Catilina lives or Rome dies!”

Catilina stirred then in that assemblage of statues, and his beautiful and jeweled evil seemed to catch a thousand tiny fires in the bronze gloom, glittering from his eyes to his shoulders to his arms to his gemmed crimson leather boots. He caught scores of eyes which became fixed upon him. But he looked only at Cicero, and his white teeth, bared in a haughty and derisive smile, sparkled like illuminated pearls. And Cicero returned his gaze and between them stood the misty form of a maiden who had been done hideously to death, and both knew it without the shadow of a doubt.

For a long passing of time all were mute in the Temple and all waited. It was as if they had sunken in a trance from which no one would wake. Then all started at the rustle and movement of a body and they saw that Julius Caesar, grave but with smiling eyes, had risen and was facing the Senate beyond the figure of Cicero.

“My dear friend, Marcus Tullius Cicero, has spoken eloquently and with patriotic fervor,” he said in his rich voice. “Patriotism is to be greatly admired and honored. It is only its excess which is to be feared.”

Cicero started. He looked at Julius with incredulous bitterness and outrage and wrath. And Julius, though not facing him, raised his hand in protest as if Cicero had cried out.

Julius continued to the blank faces of the Senators, “Catilina has been denounced, his death demanded by the noble Consul of Rome. But he is permitted to defend himself by the very laws which Cicero upholds. Let, then, Catilina speak in his defense, lest we be shamed.”

He sat down and did not glance at Cicero. Crassus pursed his lips and studied the floor. Cicero could not move; he did not appear to breathe. Catilina stood up and as if at a signal the red torches flared and flooded him with bloody light, and he had the aspect of a terrible but magnificent demon. It was then, at beholding him in his arrogance and surety, that a wave of tremendous emotion ran like water over Cicero’s face, seeming to increase its proportions.

Catilina bowed ceremoniously and slowly to the whole Senate, to Julius and Crassus and company. All his movements were grace, and superb. When he spoke his aristocrat’s voice rose without effort and with pride.

“Lords,” he said, “I, Lucius Sergius Catilina, patrician of Rome, son of generations of Romans, soldier, officer, warrior of Rome, have been accused on four separate and hysterical occasions before you of the most malignant crimes against my country. I have been accused of conspiracy against my nation and my brothers-in-arms, my generals, my blood which many of you here today share. I have been accused of the most detestable treason against Rome, against her ordinances and safety and welfare and security. I have, disbelievingly, listened to myself being denounced as an enemy of the State! I, Lucius Sergius Catilina!”

He paused as if what he had said was so incredible that he was stunned, or that he had been dreaming and had not heard aright. He looked from face to face, and now his own was full of cold and forbidding rage. He appeared to increase in stature. He clenched his hand on his sword. His face was full of contorted and affronted beauty, and his quick breath was loud in the silent Temple.

“Surely, lords, you sharers of my station and my blood, do not believe this? Surely you are as horribly offended as am I! My ancestors fought for Rome and died on her many battlefields in defense of her honor—as did yours. They were brought home to their grieving wives and children—as were yours—carried on their shields. Their heroic swords were stained with the blood of many races, during Olympian battles fought before the faces of the gods, themselves! The annals of Rome beat like thunder with their blessed and manly names—as the names of your ancestors beat also. Nowhere is there the whisper of dishonor upon them, or the taint of cowardice or fear or desertion. In war and in peace they served their country. As did I.

“Look upon me, lords! Look upon my wounded breast and my scars, received in the service of my country!”

He rent open the scarlet top of his long robe and showed his chest, indeed crossed and recrossed with the scars of old wounds. And the Senate looked upon them and did not speak or move, though emotion rippled over many a face as the memories of old soldiers stirred within them.

“I, Lucius Sergius Catilina, have received medals and honors from my generals, and I have been embraced by them because of my services to my country! Was Sulla a liar, lords, or a traitor, that he could so honor me? Did multitudes of my countrymen vote for me for their Consul, and did they, in their voting, stigmatize themselves as liars and traitors? When I was Praetor, did I loot my country and betray her? Has Crassus here, or Julius Caesar the Magnus, or Pompey the Magnus, or the noble Publius Clodius, surnamed Pulcher, risen here to denounce me, I, their companion in many a battle, a brother, a fellow patrician, a comrade-in-arms? No! They have not risen. Not a single voice has accused me or denounced me. Save one.”

He lifted his arm and pointed to Cicero as one would point at a dog of such obscenities that he chose not to speak its name. His attitude was so offended, so full of revulsion, so vibrant with anger, that several virtuous Senators believed him and shifted in their seats and let their eyes reveal their indignation.

“Save one!” he exclaimed. “Save only one! And who is he who accuses me? Not a Roman born within the gates of Rome, but only a Roman by courtesy, born near Arpinum in the countryside, a ‘new man,’ a man devoid of honor, a newcomer, a man who cannot possibly know what it is to be a Roman born and bred within these hallowed gates, within halls resounding with the blessings of heroic ancestors, in the sight of altars raised to the gods of heroes!

“Is he a soldier, lords? Does he bear upon his flesh what you see before you on my flesh? Where is his sword, his shield, his armor of Rome? He prates of law—but it was my ancestors who wrote the law and inscribed it for the generations of Romans yet unborn! It was my ancestors who wrote our Consitution with pens dipped in their own blood. It was my ancestors who administered the laws they created, and it was my ancestors who set the feet of Romans on the path to glory and strength and majesty. Lords! Did the ancestors of this man do so, this man of undistinguished family, this man, the son of tradesmen and mean shopkeepers and petty merchants? No! Yet he prates of law, as an ass would bray at the moon!”

He struck his breast with his clenched fist. His countenance was inflamed, his great blue eyes striking each face like lightning.

“This man, in this holy Temple, before your faces, before your honor and your love of country, your birth and your breeding, before the memories of your ancestors, before the lictors and the fasces and the banners of our country, before the mighty history of Rome, dares to accuse me—me! of the most monstrous crimes that ever disgraced the spirits of men, of the most unmentionable corruptions, of treason! Treason!”

Again he struck his breast and the awful blue fire of his eyes turned upon Cicero with scorn and loathing.

“Lords, do you know what truly fills him now and what filled him before? Envy. Greed. Hatred of what he can never aspire to so long as Rome exists! He is Consul of Rome. It is not enough for him. Through guile and a mellifluous voice he has seduced the wits of Romans and made some fame for himself. It is not enough for him. He has risen from poverty to riches—the riches of Rome. It is not enough for him. He is envious. He wishes to be what I am, a patrician. Failing that, he would destroy and devour what he can never attain, what the gods have denied to him.

“On four separate occasions he has furiously and madly attacked me, in his envy and his frustration. I have heard him twice. On two occasions I did not come here, for very shame for my country. I did not fear him. I did not fear that you would believe him, in his horrible accusations against a son of Rome. I disdained to hear him, for who would give credence to one of low birth and mean ancestry? Only animals, as gluttonous as he.

“And now, he has the effrontery—which would never have been countenanced in the days of your fathers and mine—to demand that I die ignominiously for crimes I have never committed, and which as a patrician Roman I could not commit, nay, not even if I were deranged! I have endured him. Lords, I can endure him no more. I ask that you remember our common blood and the souls of our ancestors, and ask yourselves if I could be guilty of the stupendous crimes of which I have been accused—by this Marcus Tullius Cicero whose ancestors were fullers and washed our clothing! Search your hearts and your memories, lords, and then look upon what Rome has spewed up in these days, that low-born and base men can rise up, with impunity, and denounce men like myself who are the very spirit of Rome!”

He flung himself into his chair again and pressed his clenched fists upon his knees, and his breast heaved and he stared at the floor as if he saw a fearful and intimidating vision which he repudiated with all his blood and the force of his passions.

Quintus, who stood near his brother, felt his mouth fill with bile and the lust to do death. His burly face, usually so highly colored, was white as linen. His large hand rose and gripped Cicero’s arm, and he found it as rigid as stone, and he saw that his brother was staring at Catilina as one would stare at a Gorgon’s head.

Then in the profound and deadly silence Julius Caesar rose again, clothed splendidly, and faintly smiling. He addressed the Senate, who reluctantly tore their eyes from Catilina to listen to him.

“Lords,” he said in a gentle and reasonable voice, “we have heard the accuser and the accused. Catilina’s words indeed strike to the heart of every proud man. But, lords, we have the evidence! Cicero’s accusations are not based on envy and wind. We have Catilina’s lieutenants’ confessions, which in justice and in the search of truth were not extracted from them by durance and torture, but which were freely admitted by the mouths of patricians themselves, and with the patrician’s contempt for lies.”

Catilina raised his beautiful and terrible head and looked directly at Julius, who smiled with slight indulgence.

“These days are not the days of our fathers, alas,” said Julius with sadness. “Patricians in earlier days did not consort with foolish and plotting zealots of excitable ambitions. But life was simpler in the days of our fathers, and not so demoralized and so complex and so bewildering and not so shaken by the many winds of change and differences. A man knew his duty in those simple days. He was not mystified as to what was best for his country. He fought for her, simply, and died for her. His politics were not confounded and abstruse and intricate as now they are. Out of confusion, even out of good will and a love for one’s fellows, there must inevitably rise, at times, a certain bafflement, a certain tendency to be duped by beguiling tongues, a certain unsureness of aims. What seemed good for our fathers no longer seems good to, alas, many of the unstable of character. Shall we call this instability, this confusion, treason, the most unpardonable of crimes? Or shall we call it deplorable and have compassion upon the silly perpetrators?”

Crassus suppressed his dark smile. Clodius moved uncomfortably. Pompey looked at Caesar and the impassive eyes narrowed. But the young Marcus Porcius Cato, grandson of the fiery old patriot and Censor, looked upon Caesar with horror and with Cicero’s own silent wrath.

“It is not unknown,” Caesar continued with ripe sorrow and regret, “that even aristocrats can be deluded and confused. Catilina has been accused by his own lieutenants of plotting against Rome, of a desire to fire and destroy her in a kind of exultant madness, of betraying her. One must remember that those lieutenants, in their eagerness to escape just punishment for their own crimes, might tend to exaggeration. Let us grant that Catilina listened to them and dreamed great mad dreams. After all, they are his fellow patricians. But young men! lords, and one knows the excesses of young and ardent men! Catilina is no longer young. And, he has been wounded many times in the service of his country, and suffered many fevers in foreign parts, and these are enough in themselves to throw a man’s reason into disorder and to affect his judgment. I know him well; I have known him from childhood. I have fought side by side with him, and never was there a braver or more dedicated soldier! I found in him, in our youth together, no sign of this derangement which is alleged to possess him now—the result of hearkening to men of impatient passions and more impatient lusts.

“There may be much truth in what his lieutenants have said—and much imagination on their part. If Catilina listened, and was confused, and did not know what to do in these arduous and changing days and complexities of living and government, then his very listening was stupid. But, does that constitute treason? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

“Nevertheless, it does call for a penalty, and I demand it.”

He looked at Catilina whose perfect mouth was set in an expression of mournful dejection, and whose head was bowed again.

“Let him go forth!” cried Julius as if tortured by regret and indignation and yet by pity. “Let him spend the last years of his life in exile, where he can do penance for his folly and remember, unavailingly, the city of his fathers. Let us give him assurance that there will be no sentries at the gates, no ambushes to murder him on that road to exile. Let us forget the name of Catilina, as he, himself, must desire to be forgotten. Let us have mercy, remembering his services to his country in the past, and his bravery and his heroism. Let him go, to meditate on his follies and recall, as the years pass, that his fellow Romans could be moved to compassion and to spare him.” At this, Julius put his hands over his face as if to hide his tears, and then he averted his face and sat down in an attitude of exhaustion and pain.*

Cicero said to himself with the utmost despair: He has betrayed me and Rome. How did Catilina reach him, that he dishonored himself so? O Julius, I thought no better of you, but I have had my hopes! I thought that at the last you would stand with your country. Now all is lost.

Cicero saw the faces of the Senators and saw the struggle upon them and the fear and the darkness. And worst of all, the doubt and unsureness.

It was then that young Cato rose, the man with the refined face and the unafraid and wrathful eyes and the delicate features. Cato came to stand beside Cicero and to take his hand in the unaffected gesture of a comrade. And he looked at the Senators and his eyes became bright and steadfast. Then slowly he turned to Julius, who had suddenly recovered from his grief and was sitting upright in his ivory chair, as if he saw a marble Hermes come to life and confront him. Cato raised his hand and pointed at Caesar and began to speak in a voice that trembled and was at first shy, and then slowly gathered strength.

“Caesar! Son of a great and honored house! Caesar the Magnus, the famed soldier! Caesar who has today dishonored all that he is, and his country, too!”

The Senators straightened in their seats and could not believe their eyes and their ears. They looked at each other, dumfounded.

“Caesar, the dissembler, the liar!” cried Cato, with all the power of his anger. “He knows that what Cicero has said is truth; he knows that what the lieutenants of Catilina have said is truth! Why does he deny it? Tell me, Caesar, of what are you afraid? What emotions crowd your subtle heart? What deviousnesses of brain and soul?

“You have heard the truth many times, yet now you speak softly. Softly! What softness is this in behalf of traitors, Caesar? Why do you insult our intelligence, our knowledge, our rationality as men, our awareness of the truth? Must there be softness for traitors, for the enemies of our country? Must there be the excuse that they were duped, that they were confused, that they did not know what they did? That they intended well, out of the goodness of their hearts, and that only the result was vile and not the intention? When they disseminated treason, did they do it only out of the love of man and a burning desire for justice, however misguided or dangerous? Were they only dissatisfied and did they only do what they did in order to better the lot of all Romans, particularly those they called the ‘oppressed?’ Was their impatience, as you call it, only the impatience of those who ache to improve society? Were they frustrated, merely, at the slowness of the law, and the slow correction of what is unworthy in the law? Or, Caesar, are they what you know they are—traitors and murderers and assassins and renegades, with a full knowledge of their crimes and with a lust for power?”

His voice choked with his godlike emotion and rage. And the Senators, moved again and coming as out of a dream, listened. Julius smiled musingly. Crassus betrayed nothing in his expression. Pompey smiled an inscrutable smile. Clodius affected to examine his nails.

Cato continued, trembling for all to see, but not with fear:

“What I advise—what I now demand and what all Romans demand with me—is this, that since the State, by a known and treasonable combination of dissolute citizens, has been brought into the most monstrous peril, and since the plotters, including Catilina, are among us, and more, convicted on their own confession of having thought up massacres and riot, incendiarisms, and all sorts of inhuman and cruel outrages on their fellow citizens, punishment be inflicted according to old-fashioned and ancient precedent, as on men found guilty of capital crimes!”*

So fascinated were the Senators, and so struck by the simplicity and ardor and passionate honesty of the young man, whom they had known as a gentle and serious squire, a studious patrician, a valorous but unassuming Roman, that they did not notice that Catilina had risen, in his distant station, and had suddenly disappeared, melting away through the throngs and even the soldiers at the door who were as fascinated and as struck as themselves. The massed people outside were themselves unaware of his fast and gliding passage, for they had been listening to Caesar and to Cato and were astonished and entranced, their heads lifted and strained so as not to miss a word, their voices, always so exuberant, for once silenced. They did not notice nor heed Catilina’s soft escape; if they were aware at all they thought it a mere jostling. It did not occur to them, until too late, to know that he had escaped. Too, the winter sun had become dazzling so that the eye ached and watered as it tried to peer through the brilliance to the dusk within the Temple.

Only one saw that stealthy exit and that was Julius Caesar, and he never started or betrayed what he had seen and kept his expression thoughtful. At last, when he heard no outcry beyond the Temple, he became aware that he had been holding his breath and that his lungs were protesting. He smiled in himself with intense relief, and glanced warily at Cicero. But Cicero’s head was bowed, for he had been deeply moved by Cato’s words and the touch of his hand. He heard the murmur of the Senators when Cato had finished speaking, and he pondered in himself before he lifted his head and addressed them again, knowing that only too many were hostile to him and despised him.

“Lords, Cato is of the opinion that men who have attempted to deprive us of life, to destroy this Republic, and to blot out the name of the Roman people, ought not to enjoy for a single second the privilege of life and the breath which we all share; and he bears in mind that this particular punishment has often been resorted to at Rome in dealing with disloyal citizens. Caesar understands that death has not been ordained by the immortal gods as a method of punishment, but is either an inevitable consequence of natural existence or a peaceful release from labors and afflictions. Thus the wise have never faced death with reluctance and the brave have often met it gladly. But imprisonment and especially death have certainly been devised as the exceptional penalty for abominable crimes. Caesar, however, proposes that Catilina and his conspirators be exiled from Rome and be distributed to unfortunate other towns or hamlets throughout Italy, which would seem, lords, to be an act of unfairness to those towns or hamlets!” He sighed and shook his head.

“If you adopt Caesar’s proposal, which is in accord with his own political life which is considered ‘popular,’ I shall have less reason to fear an outburst of public resentment, for many love Catilina. If you adopt the alternative of death, I shall bring upon myself a larger amount of danger. But let me ask this of Caesar: Surely he is aware that the Sempronian Law was enacted for the benefit of Roman citizens only, and that a man who is an open enemy of the State cannot really be a citizen, and therefore cannot suffer only exile!

“Lords, I have concluded my exhortations, and the decision is now yours. You can only determine, in the light of evidence, and with courage, as to the supreme welfare of yourselves and of the Roman people, as to your wives and children, as to your altars and your hearths, your sanctuaries and temples, the buildings and homes of the whole city, as to your sovereignty and your liberty, the safety of Italy, the whole commonwealth of Rome. I am your Consul. I will not hesitate to obey your instructions, whatever they may be. And I will take it upon myself the entire responsibility.”*

He looked at the Senators with quiet severity and did not glance away from them. He stood with his brother at one hand and Cato at the other. The fate of Rome lay with these Senators, and he was resigned to their hesitation and their ultimate rejection of his demand for Catilina’s death.

But the people outside had rapidly passed his final words among themselves to the farthest reaches of the Forum, and now the Temple, as Cicero waited and the Senators conducted a whispered consultation with each other, was suddenly invaded by a huge and thunderous roar: “Death to Catilina and all the traitors! Death! Death!”

Cicero heard and the faintest of smiles passed over his stern features. Caesar heard, and looked into Crassus’ eyes and read nothing there that he could interpret. And the Senators heard, and listened acutely, and knew that they had no alternative. The oldest among them directed his eyes upon the Consul and said:

“Death to Catilina and his conspirators.”

He had hardly finished speaking when Quintus started forward and gave a signal to his soldiers to arrest Catilina. But Catilina was not there, and at once those within the Temple joined their angered cries with those outside. Catilina, on his great black horse, and followed by several of his companions was, at that very moment, sweeping furiously through the nearest gates of Rome to join old Manlius.

Late that night Cicero sat in his library signing the documents which would deliver Catilina’s lieutenants, now in prison, to the Tullian dungeon for execution on the morrow. The execution would be the most shameful of all: the lowering of a man into a pit where he would be seized and strangled slowly and painfully. Cicero’s hand faltered. Desperately he wished there could be an alternative. He looked at his pen and shuddered. Never before had he signed a death warrant for any man. But if Rome were to live these men must die, though all were patricians and one had, for a year, been a Consul of Rome. Which was more evil: Execution for treason or the treason itself? He sighed deeply and his signature on the warrants was hardly legible, so great was his anguish of soul.

He had just completed the wretched task when his overseer announced the arrival of Julius Caesar. Marcus’ first impulse was to deny him an audience, for his bitterness against his old friend was extreme. Then he wearily assented, and pushed aside the warrants and looked at them briefly. It seemed to him that the edges were stained with blood.

Caesar entered softly and gravely and with a most serious face. Marcus silently motioned to him to seat himself, and as silently he poured wine for his guest. Caesar took the goblet, and Marcus took his own. Then Caesar toasted his host. Marcus made no gesture but put the cup to his lip.

“You are angry against me, Marcus,” said Julius. “But was it not better that I gave dissent to the proceedings than permit a too hasty decision by the Senate? History will record that Catilina was condemned only after long and judicious consideration, and with justice, and not by emotion.”

“That was not your intention, Julius,” said Marcus, his bitterness increasing. “Tell me: In what manner did Catilina reach you and intimidate you, that you became his advocate?”

Julius raised his black brows in astonishment. “I swear to you, Marcus, that I do not understand you! What are you implying?”

“The truth, Julius, only the truth. No matter. You will not tell me. Why are you here?”

Julius smiled at him affectionately. “To applaud you, Marcus, for saving Rome.”

Now Marcus could not control himself. He lifted up the death warrants in his hand and held them high and shook them. “Look at these, Caesar! One demands the arrest and subsequent execution of Lucius Sergius Catilina! The five others order the execution, tomorrow, of his lieutenants! Six warrants, Caesar, six only. Do you not know the other names which should be now in my hand? Yours, Caesar, and Pompey’s, and Clodius’, and most probably even Crassus’! And all the others with you! All! I tell you, I should sleep better tonight, and with less agony of spirit, if your names were here also, and that I swear by my holy patroness, Pallas Athene.”

He flung the warrants down on his table and stared at them with grim suffering. Caesar rose and put down his goblet. “You wrong us, Marcus,” he said.

“Do I, Caesar?”

“Yes. I have sworn to this often before.”

“You swear a lie, and for that the gods will have their vengeance upon you.”

Caesar fastened the jeweled pin on his shoulder which held his cloak. He gazed at Marcus in a long quiet. At last he said, “You are a good man, old friend and companion, and your heart is sore that you must do this thing, and so you speak intemperately. Enough. I forgive you, for do I not love you? Let your heart be at rest. You have saved Rome.”

But Marcus’ wrath forced him hastily to his feet and he leaned across the table so that his face confronted Caesar’s, and he flushed crimson.

“I did not save Rome, Caesar! No one can now save Rome, and that you know. She is doomed, Caesar, as you are doomed, and I, and a whole world with us!”

A little later that night Julius said to Crassus: “I tell you, not only Catilina is mad. Cicero is mad also. He has saved Rome for us. He confuses the audacity and murders of Catilina with our own deliberate and intelligent decision not to oppose change, and”—here Julius smiled—“to guide it skillfully.”

“Let us be grateful,” said Crassus. “We have seen the end of Catilina.”

*Preamble to second oration against Catilina.

*Fourth oration considerably condensed.

*Actual speech of Caesar.

*An actual recorded speech of Marcus Porcius Cato.

*Conclusion of fourth oration.