On which account I, who know
 by experience the troubles attending on standing for office, on defending and accusing
 prisoners, consider that the truth in respect of each business stands thus,—that in standing for
 an office, eagerness is the chief thing; in defending a man, a regard for one's duty is the
 principal thing shown; in accusing a man, the labour is greatest.
 And therefore I say decidedly that it is quite impossible for the same man to
 do justice properly to the part of an accuser and a candidate for the consulship. Few can play
 either part well; no one can do justice to both. Did you, when you turned aside out of the
 course prescribed for you as a candidate, and when you had transferred your attention to the
 task of prosecuting, think that you could fulfil all the requirements of both? You were greatly
 mistaken if you did; for what day was there after you once entered on that prosecution, that you
 did not devote the whole of it to that occupation? 
 You demanded a law about bribery, though there was no deficiency of laws on that matter, for
 there was the Calpurnian law, framed with the greatest severity. Your inclinations and your wish
 procured compliance with your demand; but the whole of that law might perhaps have armed your
 accusation, if you had had a guilty defendant to prosecute; but it has been of great injury to
 you as a candidate. A more severe punishment for the common
 people was demanded by your voice. The minds of the lower orders were agitated. The punishment
 of an exile was demanded in the case of any one of our order being convicted. The senate granted
 it to your request; but still it was with no good will that they established a more severe
 condition for our common fortunes at your instigation. Punishment was imposed on any one who
 made the excuse of illness. The inclinations of many men were alienated by this step, as by it
 they were forced either to labour to the prejudice of their health, or else through the distress
 of illness they were compelled to abandon the other enjoyments of life. What then, are we to say
 of this? Who passed this law? He, who, in so doing, acted in obedience to the senate, and to
 your wish. He, in short, passed it to whom it was not of the slightest personal advantage. Do
 you think that those proposals which, with my most willing consent, the senate rejected in a
 very full house, were but a slight hindrance to you? You demanded the confusion of the votes of
 all the centuries, the extension of the Manilian law, This was not the
 Manilian law, in support of which Cicero spoke to confer the command in Asia on Pompeius; but a
 law enacting that the votes should be counted without any regard to the centuries in which they
 were given; but this law was repealed soon after its enactment. the equalization or all
 interest and dignity, and of all the suffrages. Honourable men, men of influence
 in their neighbourhoods and municipalities, were indignant that such a man should contend for
 the abolition of all degrees in dignity and popularity. You also wished to have judges selected
 by the accuser at his pleasure, the effect of which would have been, that the secret dislikes of
 the citizens, which are at present confined to silent grumblings, would have broken out in
 attacks on the fortunes of every eminent man. 
 All these measures were strengthening your hands as a prosecutor, but weakening your chance as
 a candidate. And by them all a violent blow was struck at your hopes of success, as I warned
 you; and many very severe things were said about it by that most able and most eloquent man,
 Hortensius, owing to which my task of speaking now is the more difficult; as, after both he had
 spoken before me, and also Marcus Crassus, a man of the greatest dignity, and industry, and
 skill as an orator, I, coming in at the end, was not to plead some part of the cause, but to say
 with respect to the whole matter whatever I thought advisable. Therefore I am forced to recur to
 the same ideas, and to a great extent, O judges, I have to contend with a feeling of satiety on
 your part. 
 But still, O Servius, do you not see that you completely lay the axe to the root of your
 chance as a candidate, when you give the Roman people cause for apprehension that Catiline might
 be made consul through your neglect and, I may almost say, abandonment of your canvass, while
 you were intent on your prosecution? In truth, men saw that
 you were hunting about for evidence; that you yourself looked gloomy, your friends out of
 spirits; they noticed your visits, your inquiries after proofs, your privy meetings with your
 witnesses, your conferences with your junior counsel; all which matters are certainly apt to
 make the countenance of a candidate look darker. Meantime they saw Catiline cheerful and joyous,
 accompanied by a band of youths, with a bodyguard of informers and assassins, elated by the
 hopes which he placed in the soldiers, and, as he himself said, by the promises of my
 colleagues; surrounded, too, with a numerous body of colonists from Arretium and Faesulae—a
 crowd made conspicuous by the presence of men of a very different sort in it, men who had been
 ruined by the disasters in the time of Sulla. His own countenance was full of fury; his eyes
 glared with wickedness; his discourse breathed nothing but arrogance. You might have thought
 that he had assured himself of the consulship, and that he had got it locked up at home. Murena
 he despised. Sulpicius he considered as his prosecutor, not as a competitor. He threatened him
 with violence; he threatened the republic. 
 And I need not remind you with what terror all good men were seized in consequence of these
 occurrences, and how entirely they would all have despaired of the republic if he had been made
 consul. All this you yourselves recollect; for you remember, when the expressions of that wicked
 gladiator got abroad, which he was said to have used at a meeting at his own house, when he said
 that it was impossible for any faithful defender of the miserable citizens to be found, except a
 man who was himself miserable; that men in an embarrassed and desperate condition ought not to
 trust the promises of men of a flourishing and fortunate estate; and therefore that those who
 were desirous to replace what they had spent, and to recover what they had lost, had better
 consider what he himself owed, what he possessed, and what he would dare to do; that that man
 ought to be very fearless and thoroughly overwhelmed by misfortune, who was to be the leader and
 standard-bearer of unfortunate men.