And as this is the case, O judges, in the first place for the sake of the republic, than which nothing ought to be of more importance in the eyes of every one, I do warn you, as I am entitled to do by my extreme diligence in the cause of the republic, which is well known to all of you,—I do exhort you, as my consular authority gives me a right to do,—I do entreat you, as the magnitude of the danger justifies me in dying, to provide for the tranquillity, for the peace, for the safety, for the lives of yourselves and of all the rest of your fellow-citizens. In the next place I do appeal to your good faith, O judges, (whether you may think that I do so in the spirit of an advocate or a friend signifies but little,) and beg of you, not to overwhelm the recent exaltation of Lucius Murena, an unfortunate man, of one oppressed both by bodily disease and by vexation of mind, by a fresh cause for morning. He has been lately distinguished by the greatest kindness of the Roman people, and has seemed fortunate in being the first man to bring the honours of the consulship into an old family, and a most ancient municipality. Now, in a mourning and unbecoming gait, debilitated by sickness, worn out with tears and grief, he is a suppliant to you, O judges, invoking your good faith, imploring your pity, fixing all his hopes on your power and your assistance.

Do not, in the name of the immortal gods, O judges, deprive him not only of that office which he thought conferred additional honour on him, and at the same time of all the honours which he had gained before, and of all his dignity and fortune. And, O judges, what Lucius Murena is begging and entreating of you is no more than this; that if he has done no injury unjustly to any one, if he has offended no man's ears or inclination, if he has never (to say the least) given any one reason to hate him either at home or when engaged in war, he may in that case find among you moderation in judging, and a refuge for men in dejection, and assistance for modest merit. The deprivation of the consulship is a measure calculated to excite great feelings of pity, O judges. For with the consulship everything else is taken away too. And at such times as these the consulship itself is hardly a thing to envy a man. For it is exposed to the harangues of seditious men, to the plots of conspirators, to the attacks of Catiline. It is opposed single-handed to every danger, and to every sort of unpopularity.

So that, O judges, I do not see what there is in this beautiful consulship which need be grudged to Murena, or to any other man among us. But those things in it which are calculated to make a man an object of pity, are visible to my eyes, and you too can clearly see and comprehend them. If (may Jupiter avert the omen) you condemn this man by your decision, where is the unhappy man to turn? Home? What that he may see that image of that most illustrious man his father, which a few days ago he beheld crowned with laurel when men were congratulating him on his election, now in mourning and lamentation at his disgrace?

Or to his mother, who, wretched woman, having lately embraced her son as consul, is now in all the torments or anxiety, lest she should but a short time afterwards behold that same son stripped of all his dignity? But why do I speak of his home or of his mother, when the new punishment of the law deprives him of home, and parent, and of the intercourse with and sight of all his relations? Shall the wretched man then go into banishment? Whither shall he go? Shall he go to the east, where he was for many years lieutenant, where he commanded armies, and performed many great exploits? But it is a most painful thing to return to a place in disgrace, from which you have departed in honour. Shall he hide himself in the opposite regions of the earth, so as to let Transalpine Gaul see the same man grieving and mourning, whom it lately saw with the greatest joy, exercising the highest authority? In that same province, moreover, with what feelings will he behold Caius Murena, his own brother? What will be the grief of the one what will be the agony of the other? What will be the lamentations of both? How great will the vicissitudes of fortune appear and what a change will there be in every one's conversation when in the very places in which a few days before messengers and letters had repeated, with every indication of joy that Murena had been made consul in the very places from which his own friends and his hereditary connections flocked to Rome for the purpose of congratulating him he himself arrives on a sudden as the messenger of his own misfortune.

And if these things seem bitter and miserable and grievous if they are most foreign to your general clemency and merciful disposition, O judges, then maintain the kindness done to him by the Roman people restore the consul to the republic grant this to his own modesty, grant it to his dead father, grant it to his race and family, grant it also to Lanuvium, that most honourable municipality, the whole population of which you have seen watching this cause with tears and mourning. Do not tear from his ancestral sacrifices to Juno Sospita, to whom all consuls are hound to offer sacrifice, a consul who is so peculiarly her own. Him, if my recommendation has any weight if my solemn assertion has any authority, I now recommend to you, O judges—I the consul recommend him to you as consul, promising and undertaking that he will prove most desirous of tranquillity, most anxious to consult the interests of virtuous men, very active against sedition, very brave in war, and an irreconcilable enemy to this conspiracy, which is at this moment seeking to undermine the republic.