Survey for a moment in your mind's eye, O judges, (to say nothing of other instances,) these very men who were implicated in this wickedness. Catiline conspired against the republic. Whose ears were ever unwilling to believe in this attempt on the part of a man who had spent his whole life, from his boyhood upwards, not only in intemperance and debauchery, but who had devoted all his energies and all his zeal to every sort of enormity, and lust, and bloodshed? Who marveled that that man died fighting against his country, whom all men had always thought born for civil war? Who is there that recollects the way in which Lentulus was a partner it of informers or the insanity of his caprices or his perverse and impious superstition, who can wonder that he cherished either wicked designs, or insane hopes? Who even thinks of Caius Cethegus and his expedition into Spain and the wound inflicted on Quintus Metellus Pius without seeing that a prison was built on purpose to be the scene of his punishment?

I say nothing of the rest that there may be some end to my instances. I only ask you silently to recollect all those men who are proved to have been in this conspiracy. You will see that every one of those men was convicted by his own manner of life, before be was condemned by our suspicion. And as for Autronius himself, (since his name is the most nearly connected with the danger in which my client is, and with the accusation which is brought against him,) did not the manner in which he had spent all his early life convict him? He had always been audacious, violent profligate. We know that in defending himself in charges of adultery, he was accustomed to use not only the most infamous language, but even his fists and his feet. We know that he had been accustomed to drive men from their estates, to murder his neighbors, to plunder the temples of the allies, to disturb the courts of justice by violence and arms; in prosperity to despise every body, in adversity to fight against all good men; never to regard the interests of the republic, and not to yield even to fortune herself. Even if he were not convicted by the most irresistible evidence, still his own habits and his past life would convict him.