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.