The chief of those men was Publius Lentulus, the parent and god of my
 life, and fortune, and memory, and name. He thought that the best proof that he could give of
 his virtue, the best indication that he could afford of his disposition, the greatest ornament
 with which he could embellish his consulship would be the restoration of me to myself, to my
 friends, to you, and to the republic. And as soon as ever he was appointed consul elect he
 never hesitated to express an opinion concerning my safety worthy both of himself and of the
 republic. When the veto was interposed by the tribune of the people,—when that admirable
 clause was read: “That no one should make any motion before you that no one should propose any
 decree to you that no one should raise any discussion, or make any speech or take any vote or
 frame any law;” he thought all that as I have said before, a proscription and not a law, by
 which a citizen who had deserved well of the republic was by name and without any trial, taken
 from the senate and the republic at the same time. But as soon as he entered on his office, I
 will not say what did he do before, but what else did he do at all, except labour by my
 preservation to establish your authority and dignity on a firm basis for the
 future? O ye immortal gods! what great kindness do you appear to have shown me, in making Publius
 Lentulus consul this year. How much greater still would your bounty bare been, had he been so
 the preceding year; for I should not have been in want of such medicine as a consul could
 give, unless I had fallen by a wound inflicted by a consul. I had been often told by one of
 the wisest of men and one of the most virtuous of citizens, Quintus Catulus, that it was not
 often that there was one wicked consul, but that there had never been two at the same time
 since the foundation of Rome, except in that terrible time of Cinna. Wherefore, he used to say
 that my interest would always be firmly secured, as long as there was even one virtuous consul
 in the republic. And he would have spoken the truth, if that state of things with respect to
 consuls could have remained lasting and perpetual, that, as there never had been two bad ones
 in the republic, so there never should be. But if Quintus Metellus had been at that time
 consul, who was then my enemy, do you doubt what would have been his feelings with regard to
 my preservation, when you see that he was a mover and seconder of the measure proposed for my
 restoration? But at that time there were two consuls, whose minds, narrow, contemptible, mean,
 groveling, dark, and dirty, were unable to look properly at, or to uphold, or to support the
 mere name of the consulship, much less the splendour of that honour, and the importance of
 that authority. They were not consuls, but dealers in provinces, and sellers of your dignity.
 One of whom demanded back from me, in the hearing of many, Catiline, his lover; the other
 reclaimed Cethegus, his cousin;—the two most wicked men in the memory of man, who (I will not
 call them consuls, but robbers) not only deserted, in a cause in which, above all others, the
 welfare of the republic and the dignity of the consulship was concerned, but betrayed me, and
 opposed me, and wished to see me stripped of all aid, not only from themselves, but also from
 you and from the other orders of the state. One of them, however, deceived neither me nor any
 one else. For who ever could have any hope of any good existing in that man, the
 earliest period of whose life was made openly subservient to everyone's lusts; who had not the
 heart to repel the obscene impurity of men from the holiest portion of his person? who, after
 he had ruined his own estate with no less activity than he afterwards displayed in his
 endeavours to ruin the republic, supported his indigence and his luxury by every sort of
 pandering and infamy; who, if he had not taken refuge at the altar of the tribuneship, would
 not have been able to escape from the authority of the praetor, nor the multitude of his
 creditors, nor the seizure of his goods. And if he had not while in discharge of that office,
 passed that law about the piratical war, he, in truth, would have yielded to his own poverty
 and wickedness, and had recourse to piracy himself; and who would have done so with less
 injury to the republic than he did by remaining within our walls as an impious enemy and
 robber. It was he who was inspecting victims, and sitting in the discharge of that duty, when
 a tribune of the people procured a law to be passed that no regard should be had to the
 auspices,—that no one should on that account be allowed to interrupt the assembly or the
 comitia , or to put his veto on the passing of a law; and
 that the Aelian and Fufian “The Aelia
 lex and Rufia lex were passed about the end of
 the sixth century of the city, and gave all magistrates the obnuntiatio , or power of preventing or dissolving the comitia by observing the omens, and declaring them to be unfavourable.”—Smith,
 Dict. Ant. p. 560, v. Lex . laws should have no
 validity, which our ancestors had enacted, intending them to be the firmest protection of the
 republic against the insanity of the tribunes.