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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.
The committee was known as the Van Wyck Committee, a gentleman of that name having acted as chairman. The committee first went to New York, and began their inquiries with reference to the purchase of a steamboat called the "Catiline." In this case a certain Captain Comstock had been designated from Washington as the agent to be trusted in the charter or purchase of the vessel.
He felt all the exhilaration of a born student who suddenly discovers he can be practical the sort of exhilaration Cicero felt, to his surprise, in dealing with the conspiracy of Catiline, and never during the rest of his life forgot.
You see in CATILINE and SEJANUS; where the argument is great, he sometimes ascends to Verse, which shews he thought it not unnatural in serious Plays: and had his genius been as proper for Rhyme as it was for Humour, or had the Age in which he lived, attained to as much knowledge in Verse, as ours; 'tis probable he would have adorned those Subjects with that kind of writing.
It was suggested that as Pompey had been found good in all State emergencies for putting down the pirates, for instance, and for conquering Mithridates he would be the man to contend in arms with Catiline. Catiline was killed before the matter could be brought to an issue, but still the conspiracy went on, based on the jealousy which was felt in regard to Cicero.
Learned Ben, on the other hand, contrives in his Sejanus and his Catiline, by dint and sheer intellect and erudition, to give us correct waxwork and clockwork Romans; there are no anachronisms in Ben Johnson; never a pterodactyl walks down his Piccadilly.
Look, for example, at Cicero's orations against Mark Antony, or Catiline, or against Piso. It would have been said-'Oh, there's an end of republican simplicity, if plain speaking is to be put down. And then it would have been added invidiously 'Better men than ever stood in your shoes have borne worse language.
Let us pause for a moment and regard the facts. Catiline, when hunted to the last gasp, faced his enemy and died fighting like a man or a bull. Who is there cannot do so much as that? For a shilling or eighteen-pence a day we can get an army of brave men who will face an enemy and die, if death should come. It is not a great thing, nor a rare, for a man in battle not to run away.
Catiline's conspiracy is an unhappy subject for a tragedy; it is too single, and gives no opportunity to the poet to excite any of the tender passions; the whole is one intended act of horror, Crebillon was sensible of this defect, and to create another interest, most absurdly made Catiline in love with Cicero's daughter, and her with him.
Instead of the joy and ease which had lately prevailed, the effect of the long peace, a sudden sadness fell upon every one." I quote the passage because that other passage has been taken as proving the popularity of Catiline. There can, I think, be no doubt that the population of Rome was, as a body, afraid of Catiline.
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