Cicero

Since this riddle of Catiline’s referred to the senate and the people, Cicero was all the more alarmed, and he wore a breastplate when all the nobles and many of the young men escorted him from his house to the Campus Martius. Moreover, he purposely allowed the spectators to get a glimpse of his breastplate by loosing his tunic from his shoulders, thus showing them his peril.

The people were incensed and rallied about him; and finally, when they voted, they rejected Catiline once more, and elected Silanus and Murena consuls.[*](For the year 62 B.C.)

Not long after this, when Catiline’s soldiers in Etruria were already assembling and forming into companies, and when the day set for their attack was near, there came to the house of Cicero at midnight men who were the leading and most powerful Romans, Marcus Crassus, Marcus Marcellus, and Scipio Metellus; and knocking at the door and summoning the doorkeeper, they bade him wake Cicero and tell him they were there.

Their business was what I shall now relate. After Crassus had dined, his doorkeeper handed him some letters which an unknown man had brought; they were addressed to different persons, and one, which had no signature, was for Crassus himself. Crassus read this letter only, and since its contents told him that there was to be much bloodshed caused by Catiline, and advised him to escape secretly from the city, he did not open the rest, but came at once to Cicero, terrified by the danger, and seeking to free himself somewhat from charges that had been made against him on account of his friendship for Catiline.[*](See the Crassus, xiii 3. Cicero’s treatise on his consulship, there referred to, was written in Greek, and is not extant. )