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Updated: May 22, 2025
I refused in so important a matter to act on my own responsibility. No one, I was sure, would accuse me of being too careful when the safety of Rome was at stake. I called a meeting of the Senate, and took care that the attendance should be very large. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of the Gauls, I sent a praetor to the house of Cethegus to seize all the weapons that he could find.
When quite a stripling I went with him in his fourth consulship as a soldier in the ranks, on the expedition against Capua, and in the fifth year after that against Tarentum. Four years after that I was elected Quaestor, holding office in the consulship of Tuditanus and Cethegus, in which year, indeed, he as a very old man spoke in favour of the Cincian law "on gifts and fees."
"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."
Late that same night he left the city, committing the management of affairs to Cethegus and Lentulus, and promising to return before long with an army at his back. Halting awhile on his road, he wrote letters to some of the chief senators, in which he declared that for the sake of the public peace he should give up the struggle with his enemies and quietly retire to Marseilles.
She had seduced Cethegus, the first man at that time in reputation and authority of all the city, and enticed him to her love, and so had made all authority follow her. For nothing of moment was done in which Cethegus was not concerned, and nothing by Cethegus without Praecia.
Had the urgent representations of Cethegus borne fruit and had Lentulus, who after Catilina's departure was placed at the head of the conspirators, resolved on rapidly striking a blow, the conspiracy might even now have been successful. But the conspirators were just as incapable and as cowardly as their opponents; weeks elapsed and the matter came to no decisive issue.
Lord! how he would have howled with panic, if he had heard Cethegus under his bed. It would have been truly diverting to have listened to him; and satisfied I am, gentlemen, that he would have preferred the utile of creeping into a closet, or even into a cloaca, to the honestum of facing the bold artist.
Cethegus, who was then at the height of his popularity, and directed the administration, was captivated by Præcia, and began to cohabit with her, and thus the whole power of the State fell into her hands; for no public measure was transacted if Cethegus was not for it, and if Præcia did not recommend it to Cethegus.
Do not raise this arm again, do not again lift the national club to crush insects. Did Cato and Cicero proceed against Cethegus or Catiline? It is the chiefs we should assail: strike at the head." A scornful laugh echoed from the tribunes of the Assembly to the populace. The procès-verbal of this sitting was ordered to be sent to the eighty-three departments.
"I did not any of these things," answered the other. "And why not, I say, why not? why not?" cried Cataline with rude impetuosity. "That shall I answer, when you give me time," said Cethegus, coolly.
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