Pro L. Murena

And do you not see, O judges, what other evil there is added to these evils? I am addressing you,—you, O Cato. Do you not foresee a storm in your year of office? for in yesterday's assembly there thundered out the mischievous voice of a tribune [*](He means Quintus Metellus Nepos, the same man who afterwards prevented his making an address to the people on his resigning his consulship.) elect one of your own colleagues; against whom your own mind took many precautions, and so too did all good men, when they invited you to stand for the tribuneship. Everything which has been plotted for the last three years, from the time when you know that the design of massacring the senate was first formed by Lucius Catiline and by Cnaeus Piso, is now breaking out on these days, in these months, at this time.

What place is there, O judges, what time, what day, what night is there, that I have not been delivered and escaped from their plots and attacks, not only by my own prudence, but much more by the providence of the gods? It was not that they wished to slay me as an individual, but that they wished to get rid of a vigilant consul, and to remove him from the guardianship of the republic; and they would be just as glad, O Cato, to remove you too, if they could by any means contrive to do so; and believe me, that is what they are wishing and planning to do. They see how much courage, how much ability, how much authority, how much protection for the republic there is in you; but they think that, when they have once seen the power of the tribunes stripped of the support which it derives

When such an illustrious man, will be exposed to their attacks without are our circumstances, and such our perils, it becomes you, O Marcus Cato, who have been born, not for my good, nor for your own good, but for that of your country, to perceive what are their real objects; to retain as your assistant and defender, and partner in the republic, a consul who has no private desires to gratify, a consul (as this season particularly requires) formed by fortune to court ease, but by knowledge to carry on war, and by courage and practice to discharge in a proper manner whatever business you can impose upon him. Although the whole power of providing for this rests with you, O judges,—you, in this cause, are the masters and directors of the whole republic,—if Lucius Catiline, with his council of infamous men whom he took out with him, could give his decision in this case, he would condemn Lucius Murena; if he could put him to death, he would. For his plans require the republic to be deprived of every sort of aid; they require the number of generals who may be opposed to his frenzy to be diminished; they require that greater power should be given to the tribunes of the people, when they have driven away their adversary, to raise sedition and discord. Will, then, thoroughly honourable and wise men, chosen out of the most dignified orders of the state, give the same decision that most profligate gladiator, the enemy of the republic, would give?

Believe me, O judges, in this case you are deciding not only about the safety of Lucius Murena, but also on your own. We are in a situation of extreme danger; there is no means now of repairing the losses which we have already, sustained, or of recovering the ground which we have lost. We must take care not only not to diminish the resources which we still have, but to provide ourselves with additional ones if that be possible. For the enemy is not on the Anio, which in the time of the Punic war appeared a most terrible thing, but he is in the city, in the forum; (O ye immortal gods! this cannot be said without a groan;) there are even some enemies in this sacred temple of the republic, in the very senate-house itself. May the gods grant that my colleague, that most gallant man, may be able in arms to overtake and crush this impious piratical war of Catiline's. I, in the garb of peace, with you and all virtuous men for my assistants, will endeavour by my prudence to divide and destroy the dangers which the republic is pregnant with and about to bring forth.

But still, what will be the consequences if these things slip through our hands and remain in vigour till the ensuing year? There will be but one consul; and he will have sufficient occupation, not in conducting a war, but in managing the election of a colleague. Those who will hinder him --- That intolerable pest, --- will break forth wherever it can find room; and even now it is threatening the Roman people; soon it will descend upon the suburban districts; frenzy will range at large among the camp, fear in the senate-house, conspiracy in the forum, an army in the Campus Martius, and devastation all over the country. In every habitation, and in every place, we shall live in fear of fire and sword. And yet all these evils, which have been so long making ready against us, if the republic is fortified by its natural means of protection, will be easily put down by the counsels of the magistrates and the diligence of private individuals.

And as this is the case, O judges, in the first place for the sake of the republic, than which nothing ought to be of more importance in the eyes of every one, I do warn you, as I am entitled to do by my extreme diligence in the cause of the republic, which is well known to all of you,—I do exhort you, as my consular authority gives me a right to do,—I do entreat you, as the magnitude of the danger justifies me in dying, to provide for the tranquillity, for the peace, for the safety, for the lives of yourselves and of all the rest of your fellow-citizens. In the next place I do appeal to your good faith, O judges, (whether you may think that I do so in the spirit of an advocate or a friend signifies but little,) and beg of you, not to overwhelm the recent exaltation of Lucius Murena, an unfortunate man, of one oppressed both by bodily disease and by vexation of mind, by a fresh cause for morning. He has been lately distinguished by the greatest kindness of the Roman people, and has seemed fortunate in being

Do not, in the name of the immortal gods, O judges, deprive him not only of that office which he thought conferred additional honour on him, and at the same time of all the honours which he had gained before, and of all his dignity and fortune. And, O judges, what Lucius Murena is begging and entreating of you is no more than this; that if he has done no injury unjustly to any one, if he has offended no man's ears or inclination, if he has never (to say the least) given any one reason to hate him either at home or when engaged in war, he may in that case find among you moderation in judging, and a refuge for men in dejection, and assistance for modest merit. The deprivation of the consulship is a measure calculated to excite great feelings of pity, O judges. For with the consulship everything else is taken away too. And at such times as these the consulship itself is hardly a thing to envy a man. For it is exposed to the harangues of seditious men, to the plots of conspirators, to the attacks of Catiline. It is opposed single-handed to every danger, and to every sort of unpopularity.

So that, O judges, I do not see what there is in this beautiful consulship which need be grudged to Murena, or to any other man among us. But those things in it which are calculated to make a man an object of pity, are visible to my eyes, and you too can clearly see and comprehend them. If (may Jupiter avert the omen) you condemn this man by your decision, where is the unhappy man to turn? Home? What that he may see that image of that most illustrious man his father, which a few days ago he beheld crowned with laurel when men were congratulating him on his election, now in mourning and lamentation at his disgrace?

Or to his mother, who, wretched woman, having lately embraced her son as consul, is now in all the torments or anxiety, lest she should but a short time afterwards behold that same son stripped of all his dignity? But why do I speak of his home or of his mother, when the new punishment of the law deprives him of home, and parent, and of the intercourse with and sight of all his relations? Shall the

And if these things seem bitter and miserable and grievous if they are most foreign to your general clemency and merciful disposition, O judges, then maintain the kindness done to him by the Roman people restore the consul to the republic grant this to his own modesty, grant it to his dead father, grant it to his race and family, grant it also to Lanuvium, that most honourable municipality, the whole population of which you have seen watching this cause with tears and mourning. Do not tear from his ancestral sacrifices to Juno Sospita, to whom all consuls are hound to offer sacrifice, a consul who is so peculiarly her own. Him, if my recommendation has any weight if my solemn assertion has any authority, I now recommend to you, O judges—I the consul recommend him to you as consul, promising and undertaking that he will prove most desirous of tranquillity, most anxious to consult the interests of virtuous men, very active against sedition, very brave in war, and an irreconcilable enemy to this conspiracy, which is at this moment seeking to undermine the republic.