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Updated: June 23, 2025
Sallust is never warm in Cicero's praise, as were those subsequent authors whose words I have quoted, and has been made subject to reproach for envy, for having passed too lightly over Cicero's doings and words in his account of Catiline's conspiracy; but what he did say was to Cicero's credit.
He always spoke with contempt of Robertson. Hume he would not even read. He affronted one of his friends for talking to him about Catiline's conspiracy, and declared that he never desired to hear of the Punic war again as long as he lived. Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect our own interests, considered in itself, is no better worth knowing than another fact.
He told Catiline that under the powers which the Senate had conferred on him he might order his instant execution. He detailed Catiline's past enormities, which he had forgotten when he sought his friendship, and he ended in bidding him leave the city, go and join Manlius and his army. Never had Cicero been greater, and never did oratory end in a more absurd conclusion.
"My house on the Palatine was burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson. In the mean time the Consuls were feasting, and were congratulating themselves among the conspirators, when one boasted that he had been Catiline's friend, the other that Cethegus had been his cousin."
Here Jugurtha starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and, methinks, there cannot be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath.
He did not, indeed, engage in the campaign actively in person, having just now a fit of the gout, either real or pretended; but his lieutenant-general was an old soldier who cared chiefly for his duty, and Catiline's band reckless and desperate men who had gathered to his camp from all motives and from all quarters were at length brought to bay, and died fighting hard to the last.
Since Catiline's famous hatred for Consul Cicero, there has never been hatred so deep and envenomed as that of William of Orange for the King. For this loathing, cherished by a petty prince for a great potentate, various reasons have been given. As for myself, I view things closely and in their true light, and I am convinced that Prince William was actuated by sheer jealousy and envy.
"You do not understand. Catiline is supposed to be the author of the revolutionary schemes. You must have heard bold opinions at his table repeatedly." "I never listen to any opinions upon such subjects, bold or timid." "Look to it. Your name has been mentioned." "Mine! good Gods! I call Heaven to witness that I never so much as mentioned Senate, Consul, or Comitia, in Catiline's house."
The Cardinal Gonzaga ? Falieri. Is ours, and ours both body and soul. I confess I was first obliged to rhodomontade a good deal to him about our patriotism, our glorious designs, our love for freedom, and so forth; in short, Gonzaga is a hypocrite, and therefore is Gonzaga the fitter for us. Bravo, my friend! Venice shall see a second edition of Catiline's conspiracy.
Not long after this, Catiline's soldiers got together in a body in Etruria, and began to form themselves into companies, the day appointed for the design being near at hand.
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