and therefore he, a most upright man, a
 most virtuous citizen, though he was the grandson of Lucius Paullus, the sister's son, as I have
 said before, of Publius Africanus, lost the praetorship by his kid skins. 
 The Roman people disapproves of private luxury, but admires public magnificence. It does not
 love profuse banquets, still less does it love sordid and uncivilized behaviour. It makes a
 proper distinction between different duties and different seasons; and allows of vicissitudes of
 labour and pleasure. For as to what you say, that it is not right for men's minds to be
 influenced, in appointing magistrates, by any other consideration than that of the worth of the
 candidates, this principle even you yourself—you, a man of the greatest worth—do not in every
 case adhere to. For why do you ark any one to take pains for you, to assist you? You ask me to
 make you governor over myself to entrust myself to you. What is the meaning of this? Ought I to
 be asked this by you, or should not you rather be asked by me to undertake labour and danger for
 the sake of my safety? Nay more, why is it that you have a
 nomenclator The nomenclator was a slave
 who accompanied the candidate in going his rounds, and told him the name of every one he met,
 so that he might be able to accost them as if they were personally known to himself. 
 with you? for in so doing, you are practicing a trick and a deceit. For if it be an honourable
 thing for your fellow-citizens to be addressed by name by you, it is a shameful thing for them
 to be better known to your servant than to yourself. If though you know them yourself it seems
 better to use a prompter, why do you sometimes address them before he has whispered their names
 in your ear? Why, again, when he has reminded you of them, do you salute them as if you knew
 them yourself? And why, after you are once elected, are you more careless about saluting them at
 all? If you regulate all these things by the usages of the city, it is all right; but if you
 choose to weigh them by the precepts of your sect they will be found to be entirely wrong. Those
 enjoyments, then, of games, and gladiators, and banquets, all which things our ancestors
 desired, are not to be taken away from the Roman people, nor ought candidates to be forbidden
 the exercise of that kindness which is liberality rather than bribery. 
 
 Oh, but it is the interest of the republic that has induced you to become a prosecutor. I do
 believe, O Cato, that you have come forward under the influence of those feelings and of that
 opinion. But you err out of ignorance. That which I am doing, O judges, I am doing out of regard
 to my friendship for Lucius Murena and to his own worth, and I also do assert and call you all
 to witness that I am doing it for the sake of peace, of tranquillity, of concord, of liberty, of
 safety,—yes, even for the sake of the lives of us all. Listen, O judges, listen to the consul,—I
 will not speak with undue arrogance, I will only say, who devotes all his thoughts day and night
 to the republic. Lucius Catiline did not despise and scorn the republic to such a degree as to
 think that with the forces which he took away with him he could subdue this city. The contagion
 of that wickedness spreads more widely than any one believes: more men are implicated in it than
 people are aware of. It is within the city,—the Trojan horse, I say, is within the city; but you
 shall never be surprised sleeping by that while I am consul. 
 You ask of me why I am afraid of Catiline? I am not; and I have taken care that no one should
 have any reason to be afraid of him; but I do say that those soldiers of his, whom I see present
 here, are objects of fear: nor is the army which Lucius Catiline now has with him as formidable
 as those men are who are said to have deserted that army; for they have not deserted it but they
 have been left by him as spies, as men placed in ambuscade, to threaten our lives and liberties.
 Those men are very anxious that an upright consul and an able general—a man connected both by
 nature and by fortune with the safety of the republic, should by your decision be removed from
 the office of protecting the city, from the guardianship of the state. Their swords and their
 audacity I have procured the rejection of in the campus, I have disarmed them in the forum, I
 have often checked them at my own house; but if you now give them up one of the consuls, they
 will have gained much more by your votes than by their own swords. That which I, in spite of the
 resistance of many, have managed and carried through, namely, that on the first of January there
 should be two consuls in the republic, is of great consequence, O judges. Do not think that they should exploit ordinary counsels or the ordinary modes
 of proceeding It is not some unjust law, some mischievous bribery, or
 some improprieties in the republic that have just been heard of; that are the real objects for
 your inquiry now. Plans have been formed in this state, O judges, for destroying the city, for
 massacring the citizens, for extinguishing the Roman name. They are citizens,—citizens, I say,
 (if indeed it is lawful to call them by this name,) who are forming and have formed these plans
 respecting their own country. Every day I am counteracting their designs, disarming their
 audacity, resisting their wickedness. But I warn you, O judges; my consulship is now just at an
 end. Do not refuse me a successor in my diligence; do not refuse me him, to whom I am anxious to
 deliver over the republic in a sound condition, that he may defend it from these great dangers.