How often already has that dagger of yours been wrested from your hands? how
 often has it slipped through them by some chance, and dropped down? and yet you cannot any
 longer do without it; and to what sacred mysteries it is consecrated and devoted by you I know
 not, that you think it necessary to plunge it in the body of the consul. 
 But now, what is that life of yours that you are leading? For I will speak to you not so as
 to seem influenced by the hatred I ought to feel, but by pity, nothing of which is due to you.
 You came a little while ago into the senate in so numerous an assembly, who of so many friends
 and connections of yours saluted you? If this in the memory of man never happened to any one
 else, are you waiting for insults by word of mouth, when you are overwhelmed by the most
 irresistible condemnation of silence? Is it nothing that at your arrival all those seats were
 vacated? that all the men of consular rank, who had often been marked out by you for slaughter,
 the very moment you sat down, left that part of the benches bare and vacant? With what feelings
 do you think you ought to bear this? On my honour, if my
 slaves feared me as all your fellow-citizens fear you, I should think I must leave my house. Do
 not you think you should leave the city? If I saw that I was even undeservedly so suspected and
 bated by my fellow-citizens, I would rather flee from their sight than be gazed at by the
 hostile eyes of every one. And do you, who, from the consciousness of your wickedness, know
 that the hatred of all men is just and has been long due to you, hesitate to avoid the sight
 and presence of those men whose minds and senses you offend? If your parents feared and hated
 you, and if you could by no means pacify them, you would, I think, depart somewhere out of
 their sight. Now, your country, which is the common parent of all of us, hates and fears you,
 and has no other opinion of you, than that you are meditating parricide in her case; and will
 you neither feel awe of her authority, nor deference for her judgment, nor fear of her power? And she, O Catiline, thus pleads with you, and after a
 manner silently speaks to you:—There has now for many years been no crime committed but by you;
 no atrocity has taken place without you; you alone unpunished and unquestioned have murdered
 the citizens, have harassed and plundered the allies; you alone have had power not only to
 neglect all laws and investigations, but to overthrow and break through them. Your former
 actions, though they ought not to have been borne, yet I did bear as well as I could; but now
 that I should be wholly occupied with fear of you alone, that at every sound I should dread
 Catiline, that no design should seem possible to be entertained against me which does not
 proceed from your wickedness, this is no longer endurable. Depart, then, and deliver me from
 this fear; that, if it be a just one, I may not be destroyed; if an imaginary one, that at
 least I may at last cease to fear. If, as I have said, your country were thus to address you, ought she not to obtain her
 request, even if she were not able to enforce it? What shall I say of your having given
 yourself into custody? what of your having said, for the sake of avoiding suspicion, that you
 were willing to dwell in the house of Marcus Lepidus? And when you were not received by him,
 you dared even to come to me, and begged me to keep you in my house; and when you had received
 answer from me that I could not possibly be safe in the same house with you, when I considered
 myself in great danger as long as we were in the same city, you came to Quintus Metellus, the
 praetor, and being rejected by him, you passed on to your associate, that most excellent man,
 Marcus Marcellus, who would be, I suppose you thought, most diligent in guarding you, most
 sagacious hi suspecting you, and most bold in punishing you; but how far can we think that man
 ought to be from bonds and imprisonment who has already judged himself deserving of being given
 into custody? Since, then, this is the case, do you hesitate, O Catiline, if you cannot remain here with
 tranquillity, to depart to some distant laud, and to trust your life, saved from just and
 deserved punishment, to flight and solitude? Make a motion, say you, to the senate, (for that
 is what you demand) and if thus body votes that you ought to go into banishment, you say that
 you will obey. I will not make such a motion, it is contrary to my principles, and yet I will
 let you see what these men think of you. Be gone from the city, O Catiline, deliver the
 republic from fear; depart into banishment, if that is the word you are waiting for. What now,
 O Catiline? Do you not perceive, do you not see the silence of these men; they permit it, they
 say nothing; why wait you for the authority of their words when you see their wishes in their
 silence?