CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

But it was not the end. It was only the bloody beginning.

Catilina struck almost at once, with Manlius and his malcontents, with the rabble of envious freedmen, gladiators, runaway slaves, rascals, criminals of all kinds, and the disaffected, debtors, and treasonous. Among them, however, were Tuscan patriots whom Catilina had seduced, and these were his chosen men, for all were skilled soldiers, as were Manlius’ Etrurians. Rumor ran in affright to Rome. Catilina was on the march. There were tens of thousands of his sympathizers within the city, among them the relatives of Lentulus, who had died the shameful death in the Tullian dungeon with the other four lieutenants of Catilina.

Madness, as Cicero had once said, had a terrible grandeur of its own which is not found among the sane, and it was this grandeur which had fascinated those who loved Catilina. Once Noë ben Joel had written Cicero from Jerusalem: “Many of the learned Jews believe that evil men are mad. But others equally learned say that the mad are evil, and are possessed of demons. So many of our holy men spend their lives casting out devils from the afflicted.” The devil that had Catilina had never been exorcised, and now it utterly seized him. Despising his followers—thousands of whom had a genuine grievance against Rome, such as war-ruined farmers and desperate freedmen and those who had involved themselves in difficulties through the moneylenders, whose interest rates had been allowed to mount beyond reason—and despising those who stood in his way to power, he had no restraints, no human compassion or mercy.

But the old and honorable soldier, Manlius, surrounded by his veterans—who also had grievances against Rome—wrote to the general in Rome, Marcius Rex, who had been hastily commissioned by the Senate to destroy all Catilina’s and Manlius’ motley army. “My dear former brother-in-arms, Marcius,” Manlius wrote in his moving letter, “I call upon gods and men to witness that we have taken up arms not against our fatherland, or to bring danger upon others, but to protect our own persons from outrage. We are wretched and destitute. Many of us have been driven from Rome by the violence and cruelty of the moneylenders, while all have lost repute and fortune. None of us has been allowed to enjoy the protection of the law and retain our personal liberty, after being stripped of our patrimony. Your forefathers often took pity on the Roman commons and relieved their necessities by Senatorial decrees. Often the commons themselves, prompted by a desire to govern or incensed at the arrogance of the magistrates, have taken up arms and seceded from the patricians. But we ask neither for power nor for riches, but only for freedom, which no true man gives up except with his life. We implore you and the Senate to take thought of your unhappy countrymen, to restore the bulwark of the law of which the judges’ injustice has deprived us, and not to impose upon us the necessity of attacking our fellow Romans, and asking ourselves how we may sell our lives most dearly.”*

Manlius sent this letter to Marcius Rex, who promptly took it to the Senate, who requested Cicero to meet with them. Cicero read the letter and sighed bitterly. “There is much in what Manlius has written,” he said. “Advise him to have naught to do with Catilina and to lay down his arms, and the arms of his followers.” This the Senate did, and the letter was dispatched to Manlius, who had written his own letter secretly and unknown to Catilina. He showed the Senatorial letter now to Catilina who was at first enraged against the old general for his “duplicity,” and then highly amused. “Let us begin our march at once,” he said. “I do not trust that Senate, no, not now.”

Manlius hesitated, for he was old and tired and a Roman. “I have seen much violence and blood and death, Lucius. Let us bargain with the Senate, with the rulers of our country.”

Then Catilina said with wild rage, “I have no country! I never had a country! I shall have one when I seize Rome, and then only!” Catilina was furious and elated with his own plans. His army would march on Rome, twenty thousand strong at the least, via Gaul, then crossing the Apennines through the pass of Faesulae.

Cicero commissioned Metellus Celer, now one of the Praetors, to go at once to the Picenian territories and cross to Faesulae, take the heights with his legions, thus blocking the passage of Catilina. On the other hand Cicero sent C. Antonius Hybrida from Rome with another legion; Quintus Tullius Cicero was one of his captains prepared to face Catilina directly after he was deflected from Faesulae. At the hour of departure, Cicero embraced his brother with an anguish he could not control or conceal.

“Do not be overcome, dear Marcus,” said Quintus, alarmed by his brother’s tears. “I feel that I shall not die at the hands of Catilina’s criminals. I shall return. But, should I not return, remember I have perished in the name of my country.”

Catilina, a great shrewd soldier, was not overly dismayed by the fact that his march had been stopped through Faesulae. He was a strategist. He turned his army to the north valley of the Arno River, and struck toward Pistoria, in a plan to drive his way west across the Apennines to Gaul. His elation rose to the wildest heights. He had not the slightest doubt but that he would succeed. Did not the gods love the patrician and the daring and the brave and the audacious? He felt invulnerable, as if guarded by the shield of Perseus himself. He felt a veritable Hercules, whom none could conquer. There were moments when he believed that he could engage the army of Antonius alone, with his own hands, and destroy them without receiving a single wound in return. He rode back and forth along the ranks of his huge but straggling army of discontented veterans and nameless mobs armed, in hundreds of cases, only with sharpened staves or clumsy spears. He carried a blood-red Catilinii. His men looked upon his beautiful and exultant face, and terrified though they were he seemed like a god to them, beyond the power of any mortal to overthrow. His armor glittered in the winter sun. His scarlet cloak floated behind him; his helmet shone like a golden moon. Fervor and madness made an aura of light about him. The hoofs of his black horse struck fire from the stones of the valley; his shadow was long and vivid on the snow. Beyond stood the black and white mountains which, to Catilina, appeared almost at hand and hardly higher than boulders. Beyond them lay Gaul—and Rome. His voice rang like a joyous trumpet, heralding news of victory, and the ranks of his men closed and they marched with rising hearts and suddenly lost all fear and all doubt. Catilina had become the flaming Apollo to them, mounted on Pegasus, clad in armor forged by Vulcan on Olympus.

The two armies relentlessly approached each other at midday. Antonius, the patrician, colleague of Cicero, and general, was suddenly seized with disquiet. He rode side by side with his aide, Petreius, a brave and veteran soldier, and behind them rode Petreius’ favorite captain, Quintus, in brilliant armor and with a set and valorous face. And behind the three rumbled and thundered the armored war chariots with snapping banners and lictors and fasces, across the broad plain. Antonius’ disquiet grew. Catilina had attempted to seduce him; Catilina was the enemy of Rome. Catilina must be destroyed. But Catilina was also a brother patrician and Antonius had once loved him, and their families were close friends.

Antonius said to Petreius, “I am ashamed, but I am stricken suddenly with gout. I must retire to the rear. Do you then, dear comrade, go forward with these legions, and with Quintus at your side, and strike the first blow. I shall marshal the soldiers at your rear, and couriers will bring me your slightest hail.”

Petreius, the burly and grizzled general, understood at once. He was also a patrician. But above all, he was a soldier. He averted his fierce eyes and said only, “Be it as you say, Antonius. I trust you will recover at once. Quintus and I will lead the attack.” He looked down the long wide plain and saw the creeping blackness of Catilina’s army, and his lips clenched together. Quintus had heard the exchange; he did not even glance at Antonius as the latter wheeled his horse about and rode to the rear, his face fixed and pale. Quintus despised his brother’s colleague. A Roman was Roman—that was all a man needed to know. He made a gesture and suddenly the silent air and the majestic countryside hammered with marching drums. To the unfortunate Antonius it seemed that he was being ignominiously and derisively drummed to the rear, and his cheeks flushed though his lips remained white. Petreius smiled grimly. It was not Quintus’ authority to sound the drums, and the following trumpets of challenge. But Petreius did not reprove him. He motioned to Quintus to ride beside him in Antonius’ place, and Quintus, in grateful pleasure, spurred up his horse.

“If my brother were traitor to Rome, I would dispatch him with my own hand,” said Quintus. Petreius did not reply. He agreed with Quintus, but still he and Antonius were fellow patricians, and Quintus was not. But he loved valor and he reached from his own horse briefly to lay a mailed hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “We are soldiers,” he said, and it was enough for Quintus, whose strong face colored with gratification. He loved every man in the Roman army, from the charioteers to the massed legions marching behind the vehicles, from the drummers to the trumpeteers who challenged Catilina. The clamorous rumble of wheel and the shaking of the quiet and disturbed winter air by the foot soldiers excited him. It had been a long time since he had engaged in a mortal combat, and his soldier’s blood was almost unbearably stirred and his spirit rose in his breast as if with wings. He sat high in his saddle, controlled and vital, his flesh humming with life. What it was to fight for one’s country, and even to die for her! The ghosts of heroes rode with him on transparent horses, and long-silenced drums and trumpets lifted in frail jubilation like echoes above all else.

The pale but dazzling sun searched the white earth and the black and white mountains, and struck on scarlet and gold banner and the carved sharp shadows of the two approaching armies and glittered along drawn sword and broke itself upon crested helmets and impaled itself on upheld spear and filled the hollows of the snow with blue radiance. At the left of the Roman army ran the cold and Stygian river, tumbling with pale froth in its unquiet passage. Far above the sky was the faintest and iciest azure, against which the banners were like blood. Leather creaked; weapons rattled; horses neighed, raising their red nostrils impatiently to smell the acrid scent of battle. Their breath smoked. The sun blazed on thousands of gilded shields and made little suns of them, themselves.

Quintus was a man of single mind; subtleties of the effete—as he considered them—were for colonnades and not for a time when action was demanded. He was riding now to face a hostile army led by a madman, and as a soldier of a single mind he rejoiced to challenge the enemies of his country. Romans had fought Romans before, without and within the walls. It was sufficient for him. In his impatience to meet the foe he spurred his horse beyond the horse of Petreius, and had to rein in at the last moment. It was then that his simple heart was struck violently as with a fist of iron, and the thought came to him that he was eager to kill the man who had risked his own life to save him.

Catilina was the avowed and condemned enemy of Rome. He desired her destruction. Nevertheless, he had been a brave man and a heroic soldier, and a devoted comrade-inarms. All at once Quintus felt violently sick. He would not quail or withhold his hand, facing Catilina, for Catilina must manifestly die. But suddenly Quintus prayed that it would not be himself who would kill Catilina, and that Catilina would fall by another’s hand. The Roman army was now descending the slope of the plain; Catilina’s army was rising on the slope. In but a little while they would strike at each other. Quintus felt the taste of salt, or blood, in his mouth and his expression, under the lifted visor of his helmet, must have been very strange for the old veteran, Petreius gave him a quick and curious glance though he said nothing. Quintus caught that glance; he lowered his visor.

Petreius lifted his mailed hand to shade his eyes and scrutinized the approaching foe. “It is a wretched army,” he said. “We shall defeat them easily.” He swung up his arm and the thunder of the drums and the cry of the trumpets rose to a deeper pitch and stunned the ear with sound. “Charge!” cried Petreius, and he and Quintus sprang forward on their horses, and, followed by their officers and the chariots and the mounted legion and the foot legion behind them, raced to the first shock of the attack.

Catilina’s army halted abruptly and looked up to see the glittering wave rushing down upon them. It wavered. But it did not break. There were thousands of brave men who had known combat before among that army. They were led by brave men. Even the nondescript rabble of Rome which formed part of that army, and it was poorly equipped, felt the awful excitement of approaching death and battle. They closed their ranks tighter and rushed to meet the Roman army, and far in advance of them was Catilina on his black horse, plunging furiously before them. As if very nature joined in the vehemence the sun seemed to enlarge, to grow unbearably bright, to turn the snowy hills to white fire; the black river clamored and pounded in its icy banks.

The shock of the wild and terrible meeting of the two armies screamed and pounded back from the mountains, and the earth quaked. Horses flung themselves against horses, man against man. Catilina had no chariots; the Roman chariots wheeled and churned and roared about the foe. Then sun splintered on flashing swords, on the whirl of spears. Men fell from saddles and stained the snow with blood. Horses shrieked in mortality. Weapons drummed on shields. Fearful faces glared from under helmets; the air was filled with shouts and groans, the scourging of iron wheels, the cracking of axles, the thud of colliding armored bodies. What had been a still and peaceful plain, divided by a river, became a bloody place of slaughter under the fierce cold sun. And the hills echoed back the overwhelming sounds as if unseen armies from Hades had joined the battle.

Now all was one vast and flaming and bannered confusion on the plain, as swords plunged and spears struck and shields were tossed high above the lunging mass of the attacked and the attacking. Quintus saw no one but the man challenging him; one by one he disposed of each who faced him, driving him off his horse or reaching down to strike a man on foot. Sweat streamed down his face for all the intense cold of the day. His knees gripped his horse so that both his hands were free, and he directed the animal by powerful pressure only. His teeth sparkled in the ferocious light; he panted and gasped. He lost all knowledge of time, of death, of sound. One by one, as men faced him, he killed them.

The engagement was comparatively short. Catilina’s men fought like lions, even the “nondescript” elements, for there would be no quarter given or prisoners taken. Death alone would be the supreme victor. The Romans fought grimly and far more tenaciously, and with a kind of enormous contempt for the foe they faced. To a man they loathed treason, for they were soldiers first and soldiers love their country. And thousands of the enemy were Etrurians, whom the Romans did not consider Italians at all. The Romans had their nation to defend; even the bravest among the enemy knew that they were defending nothing but themselves.

Quintus tore his sword loose from flesh, to turn it on more flesh, until blood ran down his brown arm and splashed all over his armor, his tunic, his leggings and his boots. His horse was wounded, but was as valorous as himself. He had a deep wound on one thigh, and his face was also bleeding. He felt nothing but the lust of battle; he swung his horse about and leaped and battered his way through the wall of flesh that faced him. His arm never tired. And his comrades were valiant, too, and pressed about him, heaving and groaning and shouting and cursing and panting; officers and men mingled together in an iron phalanx that relentlessly pressed back the army of Catilina, hundreds of whom fell with mighty splashes in the river to drown and to choke the watery passage with their bodies. Trumpets repeatedly shattered the brilliant air with their metallic cries; drums thundered for fresh charges, for the gathering of forces. The wheeling chariots of the Romans, crowded together, crashed over and over, the wheels spurning the bloodied snow.

Then all at once the frightful encounter was over as swiftly as it had begun. Gasping for air, and looking about him, Quintus searched for Petreius, and could not see him. A mound of the reddened dead lay before him, sprawling in the last agony, leg touching arm, face thrust against foot. Now the Romans, scattered far and wide in their mission of fury, raced to the center again and cut down the last of the foe, who tried to evade them. The slaughter of both sides had been most terrible. Romans swung from their horses to embrace and console their dying comrades, or to kneel in the drenched snow to weep over a brother or to lift a visor. Chariots churned to a halt. The confusion was covered by the smoke from the nostrils of thousands of horses, who stood trembling in their tracks with lowered heads. And the blazing hills looked implacably down at the carnage and crowned themselves with fire.

Quintus was suddenly aware of exhaustion. Officers rode up to speak to him; he could only nod or shake his head, for it seemed to him that he had become deaf. He rode apart from them, to wipe his sweating face, to press his hands against his wound. It was then that he saw Catilina lying on the ground, miraculously in a little circle of his own, and in a puddle of his own blood.

Quintus, shaking as if with fever, slowly descended from his horse and staggered to the fallen man who still clutched his sword. The helmet had dropped from the noble head, and a quick wind stirred the thick dark hair with its ruddy shadows. Catilina’s face was white with death, that wonderful face which had seduced Fabia and a thousand other women in his lifetime, and had enchanted countless men who had followed him to this violent day, and this final and enormous rendezvous. His eyes, those blue eyes which had terrified and fascinated, stared at the sky sightlessly. Quintus fell to his knees beside the crushed enemy and stared at him, and dumbly wiped his sweat from his eyes with the back of his scarlet-wet hand.

One of the most appalling enemies Rome had ever known lay on his back and gazed at the sun, undone at last by the madness of hatred and ambition and lust, fallen at last by his own will. Quintus leaned over him; his breath made a cloud before his face. He brushed it away, dumbly, as if it were an intruder and not his own breath. Then he started, and shuddered, for Catilina’s eyes had turned from an apparent contemplation of the sun and were directed at him. The intense blueness was failing rapidly and glazing, but all his savage soul struggled to see behind the closing veil of death.

“Lucius?” said Quintus, and his voice was a hoarse groan. He could not help himself. He lifted the cold and flaccid hand near him and held it.

The spirit struggling to be free from Catilina’s flesh paused a moment to listen, to peer again. And then it saw Quintus’ dark and suddenly weeping face, and the faintest smile touched the handsome gray lips.

“Quintus,” he whispered. The smile deepened, and Catilina called him by the affectionate nickname he had once given him: “Bear cub.” The dying fingers, by sheer force of will, tightened on Quintus’ hand.

“Farewell,” said Catilina. He turned his eyes to the sky again, and said, “Long I hoped for this day, and blessed is its coming.” The white lids fell over the glaucous eyes; a long shivering and convulsion seized the whole body of Catilina; he stretched and straightened and his back arched. Then with a dull crash the armored body subsided on the ground and lay still, suddenly much dwindled, suddenly spent, and that which had animated it fled and left it small and collapsed, and, at the last, at peace. The sword fell from the fingers of his other hand, the short sword of Rome which he had carried in honor and dishonor.

Quintus lifted his own eyes to the indifferent sky which had witnessed endless carnage and madness, and, weeping, he said aloud, “I thank all the gods that it was not my hand which slew him! I thank the gods.” He resolutely repeated it, but something far in his mind wondered and trembled and would not let him know.

He looked down at the still hand he had not yet relinquished and he saw something glowing on one finger. It was the serpentine ring of the deadly brotherhood. Quintus recoiled. Then he forced himself to remove it, and he dropped it in his pouch, and forced himself to his feet and looked about him and with a dull stare, weaving where he stood. He saw a fallen Roman banner, sodden, stained, torn. With a gigantic effort he went to it and he lifted it from where it lay and it seemed to him that he was lifting iron and not cloth. He raised it as high as he could and stumbled back to Catilina and covered that stately body with it to hide it from the contempt of the heavens, the scorn of man, and the bitter air. For, at the end, Catilina had not died ingloriously, in the adventure of death.

“He was the enemy of Rome,” said Cicero to his brother. The serpentine ring lay on a table before them. “He was master of an abattoir. He had no real plans to rebuild, to renew, had he conquered. He was pure destruction. He wished only to gaze on terror and ruin and the collapse of a whole civilization. Violence was his mother, his wife, his mistress. He lay down with them and dreamed with them. He was filled with hatred of all men. For that, he suffered the vengeance of God.”

“He was a brave man,” said Quintus.

Cicero smiled sadly. “You speak as a soldier, my brother, and soldiers honor courage and valor above all things. But there is a greater honor and a greater valor, and that is the service of God and country, and not conquest, not personal ambition, not the love of terror for terror’s sake, not the desire to rule one’s fellows as one rules animals, not the craving for power. This honor, and this valor, is not always hailed, not always known. Yet I tell you that they are greater than the bravery of the Catilinas, and more heroic than any banners. For they are the Law.”

He stood up and embraced Quintus as he stood before him, and then left his right hand on the other’s shoulders and looked earnestly into the dulled and reddened eyes.

“I do not reproach you, Quintus, that you wept for him. It is nothing that he would have killed you gladly on that day, and would have rejoiced in the murder of myself. He was like a holocaust, a mad disaster, and such men happen to all nations as do all calamities, at many times in their history when they cease to care for the profound Laws of God. Mourn the comrade you knew, the man who saved your life. But thank the Eternal that that which was the larger part of him has forever passed away.” He added, “In his own form at least.”

But it was not yet the end, as Cicero knew only too well that it would not be.

Cneius Piso, the fair-haired and small and slender old comrade of Catilina, had been made governor of Spain a year before Catilina’s trial by the Senate. Cicero had bitterly opposed that appointment by Crassus, and before his own election to the Consulship. But Crassus had replied coldly, “You speak always of plots, Cicero. It is an obsession on your part. Cneius Piso is a noble patrician and of a great family, and a notable soldier and administrator. I reject your protestations.”

But a short time before his appearance at the Temple of Concord Catilina had sent a courier to his friend, with the one word, “Strike!” So Piso gathered a Spanish army about him, who loved him, and marched on Rome to assist his beloved fellow conspirator and to exult with him and to rule under him. The Spaniards were a gloomy but an honorable body of soldiers, and were devoted to their Roman governor. It is strange, then, that on the second day of their march they suddenly, and without apparent cause, mutinied and assassinated Cneius Piso and buried his body where they had slain him, and returned to their home.

And Q. Curius, who lurked sullenly in Rome, hidden and disgraced, was found murdered in his own bed one morning, only a week after Catilina’s bloody defeat.

“It is said,” wrote Sallust the historian, in commenting upon these events, “that Cicero’s secret police had ordered their death. It is known that Crassus, who always proclaimed his love for the two men, sacrificed for their souls in the temples but was seen with a contented smile. Julius Caesar was observed in public mourning for them, but was not evidently in the deepest grief. Pompey does not mourn, nor does Publius Clodius, who was their devoted friend. Who ordered their death will remain the secret of history.”

Cicero knew that every disastrous conspirator with Catilina must be extirpated. He shrank from the slaughter, but it was necessary so that there would be no more a focus of Catilina’s infection left to afflict the body politic again. Antonius begged him for mercy. Cicero cried to him passionately, “Do you think I revel in this? I do it only for Rome, and not from malice and personal vengeance.”

He feared that after Catilina’s death the tens of thousands of the poor and ragged and hungry in Rome, who had loved Catilina, would create riot and chaos in protest, if only temporarily, in Rome. But he had underestimated his own eloquence and the understanding of the people. For Sallust wrote: “Even the poorest and the most abandoned did not like the final idea of burning the city where they had their miserable homes, nor, until Cicero revealed it, did they understand that this, and not a great loot and redistribution of the wealth, was in Catilina’s mind.”

Manlius, on the morning Catilina’s army set out, had fallen on his own sword and was given silent burial by his men. Cicero’s secret gratitude that the brave old soldier would not have to suffer an ignominious death shook him to the heart.

All of the rebellious patricians had relatives and all those relatives, among them Publius Clodius, became Marcus’ mortal enemies. Julius Caesar saw old friends seized and executed. He and Clodius went to Crassus and said, “Cicero has lost his mind. He is arresting everyone who even knew Catilina.”

Crassus looked at them darkly and said, “What would you have? The men are guilty; you know that with certitude. Do you wish him to spare them because they are patricians and men of influence, and you have dined with them, and loved them? Are they more than the poor scoundrels, the effeminate actors and wrestlers, and the pugilists and the freedmen and the criminals who were Catilina’s followers also? I tell you they are more deadly than these.” But he frowned.

Clodius said to Caesar, “Crassus fears for himself, and what the condemned might say of him. The sooner they are dead the safer he will be. What! Did you think he would intervene? Have dictators any compunctions?”

“Dictators, my dear Clodius,” replied Julius, “cannot afford compunctions.”

Clodius had a small dark face in which the large black eyes were set so far apart and were so full and wide, that the malicious declared he resembled an intellectual frog. Now his eyes gleamed. “I shall not forget this Cicero, whom I once admired and honored.”

Julius shrugged. “Do not remember him then so long as we need him.”

“Exigency makes strange companions,” said Clodius. “Young Mark Antony is your admiring follower, yet your uncle, Marius, put his father to death. Now he swears a vendetta against Cicero because his beloved stepfather, Lentulus, was condemned to a shameful death by that Cicero. The dear Consul has made enough enemies to form a company of men.”

Cicero knew of the hatred which was following him like an army. Terentia was avid in informing him, and sometimes with tears and lamentations. “My dear friend, Julia, wife of Lentulus, is inconsolable. So are many other ladies, who were my friends. Now I am proscribed.”

“Your friendships, my dear Terentia,” said Cicero with sadness, “are less than the safety of Rome. Did you think I aspired to the Consulship to serve self-glorious ends? No! I serve only Rome.”

“Your family is nothing to you! What is political office, if a man’s family cannot enjoy their new position? There are times when I detest you, Marcus, and regret that I married you. I am ostracized! My former friends avert their faces. Our son-in-law finds many doors closed to him, even those of fellow patricians. What future will be your son’s?”

“Rome’s future, if any,” said Cicero. He thought of divorcing Terentia, for her complaints and recriminations were more than he could bear in these arduous and bloody days. He knew that the Catilinian conspiracy had involved many great families, but he had not, himself, known the extent. He now knew that Cornelius Lentulus had been assigned to the personal task of assassinating all the Senators, by Catilina, yet now those very Senators muttered that Cicero had been too harsh in his destruction of the conspiracy! Cicero remembered that Aristotle had wryly remarked that God had not endowed men with logic. He, Cicero, had saved Rome and had saved those very men secretly condemned to slaughter by Catilina. Yet now they whispered he was going to extremes, and even the people in the streets, aroused by the disaffected, turned sullen against their savior. There were moments when he considered leaving Rome, so great was his despair of mankind. Once, in an attempt to calm the growing animosity against him, he addressed the court of judicature wherein he outlined the full conspiracy against Rome and his own desperate efforts to overthrow it. The court listened in silence. Later, with derision, it was broadcast that he had made a vainglorious eulogy in his own behalf, and the walls of Rome were scribbled with obscenities against him by those whom he had saved from fire, death, and hideous slaughter.

Like many men of deep humor, he made the error of believing that every man was also endowed with it. So, when he sometimes ventured a wry or jocular remark to some acquaintance, to lift the sombreness of these days, the remark was repeated eagerly as an evidence of his hard-heartedness or frivolity or even foolishness. He said, when hearing of these things, “Unhappy is the politician! If he is always very sober, it is said he is a humorless dull ass. If he speaks lightly at times, he is considered lacking in seriousness. If he is frugal, it is said he is filling his own coffers. If generous with public funds, he is denounced for wasting the people’s substance. If he is honest, it is cried that he is dangerous or contemptuous. If a genial quibbler, it is said that he cannot be trusted. If he refuses to be intimidated by a foreign enemy, the people shout he wishes to plunge his nation into war. If he is very temperate, he is called pusillanimous. And his friends, of course, are always extremely mild in defending him against calumny!”

In the early spring he went to the island to escape his sorrow and his weariness and the growing hatred against him, which was inspired by the patricians.

*Actual’ letter from Manlius to Marcius Rex.