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Before the image there stood a votive lamp, fed by the richest oils, a mighty bowl of silver half filled with the red Massic wine, and many pateræ, or sacrificial vessels of a yet richer metal. "Hear, bird of Mars, and of Quirinus"—cried Cataline, without a pause, stretching his hands toward the glittering effigy—"Hear thou, and be propitious!
Scarcely a yard asunder they alighted on the rank grass of that charnel grove; and not three paces did they take more, ere Cataline had hurled his victim to the earth, and cast himself upon him; choking his cries for help by the compression of his sinewy fingers, which grasped with a tenacity little inferior to that of an iron vice the miserable wretch’s gullet.
These idlers do not indulge in spirituous liquors to excess, partaking only of the light Cataline wine in universal use both in Spain and her colonies. Intemperance is little seen outside the large cities, but gambling and quarreling are ever rampant among the class who frequent these posadas.
"Willingly, willingly; but what is this?" exclaimed the cutler, as Arvina unbuckling his toga and suffering it to drop on the ground, stood clad in his succinct and snow-white tunic only, girded about him with a zone of purple leather, in which was stuck the sheathless dirk of Cataline. "What is this, noble Paullus? that you carry at your belt, with no scabbard?
Gordon has also turned Sallust into English: the book was published in 1744, in one handsome quarto; "with Political Discourses upon that Author and Translations of Cicero's Four Orations against Cataline." Walpole made Gordon the first commissioner of wine licences. It is handed down, that Gordon was a burly person, "large and corpulent."
Langbain observes, that none who are acquainted with the works of Johnson can doubt that he is meant here, if they will compare the orations in Salust with those in Cataline. On what provocation Marsten thus censured his friend is unknown, but the practice has been too frequently pursued, so true is it, as Mr.
Machiavel has justly animadverted on the different notice taken by all succeeding times, of the two great projectors, Cataline and Caesar.
He lived in friendship with the famous Ben Johnson, as appears by his addressing to his name a tragi-comedy, called Male-Content: but we afterwards find him reflecting pretty severely on Ben, on account of his Cataline and Sejanus, as the reader will find on the perusal of Marsten's Epistle, prefixed to Sophonisba.
And Cataline, endowed with almost superhuman shrewdness, and himself quite immovable of purpose, perceived the feelings that actuated all the others—which he felt not, nor cared for—and called on Læca to bring wine.
"How now," he said jeeringly, before the smile had yet vanished from his ill-omened face—"what aileth the bold Paullus, that he should start, like an unruly colt scared by a shadow, from the approach of a friend?" "A friend," answered the young man in a half doubtful tone, but instantly recovering himself, "Ha! Cataline, I was surprised, and scarce saw who it was.
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