Then what happiness will you enjoy with what delight will
 you exult in what pleasure will you revel! when in so numerous a body of friends, you neither
 hear nor see one good man. All the toils you have gone through have always pointed to this sort
 of life; your lying on the ground not merely to lie in wait to gratify your unclean desires,
 but even to accomplish crimes; your vigilance, not only when plotting against the sleep of
 husbands, but also against the goods of your murdered victims, have all been preparations for
 this. Now you have an opportunity of displaying your splendid endurance of hunger, of cold, of
 want of everything; by which in a short time you will find yourself worn out. All this I effected when I procured your rejection from the consulship, that
 you should be reduced to make attempts on your country as an exile, instead of being able to
 distress it as consul, and that that which had been wickedly undertaken by you should be called
 piracy rather than war. 
 Know that I may remove and avert, O conscript fathers, any in the least reasonable complaint
 from myself; listen, I beseech you, carefully to what I say, and lay it up in your inmost
 hearts and minds. In truth, if my country, which is far dearer to me than my life,—if all
 Italy ,—if the whole republic were to address me,
 “Marcus Tullius, what are you doing? will you permit that man to depart whom you have
 ascertained to be an enemy? whom you see ready to become the general of the war? whom you know
 to be expected in the camp of the enemy as their chief; the author of all this wickedness, the
 head of the conspiracy, the instigator of the slaves and abandoned citizens, so that he shall
 seem not driven out of the city by you, but let loose by you against the city? Will you not
 order him to be thrown into prison, to be hurried off to execution, to be put to death with the
 most prompt severity? What hinders you? is it the customs of our ancestors? But even private men have often in this republic slain mischievous
 citizens.—Is it the laws which have been passed about the punishment of Roman citizens? But in
 this city those who have rebelled against the republic have never had the rights of
 citizens.—Do you fear odium with posterity? You are showing fine gratitude to the Roman people
 which has raised you, a man known only by your own actions, of no ancestral renown, through all
 the degrees of honour at so early an age to the very highest office, if from fear of
 unpopularity or of any danger you neglect the safety of your fellow-citizens. But if you have a fear of unpopularity, is that arising from the imputation
 of vigour and boldness, or that arising from that of inactivity and indecision most to be
 feared? When Italy is laid waste by war, when cities
 are attacked and houses in flames, do you not think that you will be then consumed by a perfect
 conflagration of hatred?” 
 To this holy address of the republic, and to the feelings of those men who entertain the same
 opinion, I will make this short answer:—If, O conscript fathers, I thought it best that
 Catiline should be punished with death, I would not have given the space of one hour to this
 gladiator to live in. If, forsooth, those excellent men and most illustrious cities not only
 did not pollute themselves, but even glorified themselves by the blood of Saturninus, and the
 Gracchi, and Flaccus, and many others of old time, surely I had no cause to fear lest for
 slaying this parricidal murderer of the citizens any unpopularity should accrue to me with
 posterity. And if it did threaten me to ever so great a degree, yet I have always been of the
 disposition to think unpopularity earned by virtue and glory, not unpopularity. Though there are some men in this body who either do not see what threatens, or dissemble
 what they do see; who have fed the hope of Catiline by mild sentiments, and have strengthened
 the rising conspiracy by not believing it; influenced by whose authority many, and they not
 wicked, but only ignorant, if I punished him would say that I had acted cruelly and
 tyranically. But I know that if he arrives at the camp of Manlius to which he is going, there
 will be no one so stupid as not to see that there has been a conspiracy; no one so hardened as
 not to confess it. But if this man alone were put to death, I know that this disease of the
 republic would be only checked for awhile, not eradicated for ever. But if he banishes himself;
 and takes with him all his friends, and collects at one point all the ruined men from every
 quarter, then not only will this full-grown plague of the republic be extinguished and
 eradicated, but also the root and seed of all future evils