able to name the times and places of his noble achievements; that with soldiers, whom I have a thousand times praised and rewarded, and whose pupil I was before I became their general, I shall march against an army of men strangers to one another.

On what side soever I turn my eyes, I behold all full of courage and strength; a veteran infantry, a most gallant cavalry; you, my allies, most faithful and valiant; you, Carthaginians, whom not only your country's cause, but the justest anger, impels to battle. The hope, the courage of assailants, is always greater than of those who act upon the defensive. With hostile banner displayed, you are come down upon Italy; you bring the war. Grief, injuries, indignities, fire your minds, and spur you forward to revenge. First, they demand me; that I, your general, should be delivered up to them; next, all of you who had fought at the siege of Saguntum; and we were to be put to death by the extremest tortures. Proud and cruel nation! everything must be your's and at your disposal! You are to prescribe to us with whom we shall make war, with whom we shall make peace! You are to set us bounds; to shut us up within hills and rivers; but you, you are not to observe the limits which yourselves have fixed! Pass not the Iberus. What next? Touch not the Saguntines; is Saguntum upon the Iberus ? move not a step towards that city. Is it a small matter, then, that you have deprived us of our ancient possessions, Sicily and Sardinia? you would have Spain too? Well, we shall yield Spain; and then-you will pass into Africa! Will pass, did I say ?-this very year they ordered one of their consuls into Africa, the other into Spain. No, soldiers, there is nothing left for us but what we can vindicate with our swords. Come on, then-be men! The Romans may with more safety be cowards; they have their own country behind them, have places of refuge to flee to, and are secure from danger in the roads thither; but for you, there is no middle fortune between death and victory. Let this be but well fixed in your minds, and once again, I say, you are conquerors.-Livy.

G

V. EXORDIUM OF CICERO'S ORATION AGAINST VERRES.

THE time is come, Fathers, when that which has long been wished for, towards allaying the envy your order has been subject to, and removing the imputations against trials, is (not by human contrivance, but superior direction) effectually put in our power. An opinion has long prevailed, not only here at home, but likewise in foreign countries, both dangerous to you and pernicious to the state, namely, that in prosecutions, men of wealth are always safe, however clearly convicted. There is now to be brought on his trial before you, to the confusion of the propagators of this slanderous imputation, one whose life and actions condemn him in the opinion of all impartial persons; but who, according to his own reckoning, and declared dependence on his riches, is already acquittedI mean Caius Verres. I have undertaken this trial, Fathers, at the general desire, and with the very great expectations of the Roman people; not that I might draw hatred upon that illustrious order of which the accused happens to be, but with the direct design of clearing your justice and impartiality before the world. For I have brought upon his trial, one, whose conduct has been such, that in passing a just sentence upon him, you will have an opportunity of re-establishing the credit of such trials; of recovering whatever may be lost of the favour of the Roman people; and of satisfying foreign states and kingdoms in alliance with, or tributary to us. I demand justice of you, Fathers, upon the robber of the public treasury, the oppressor of Asia Minor and Pamphylia, the invader of the rights and privileges of Romans, the Scourge and curse of Sicily. If that sentence is passed upon him which his crimes deserve, your authority, Fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public. But if his great riches should bias you in his favour, I shall still gain one point, which is, to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this case was not a criminal nor a prosecutor, but justice and adequate punishment.

V-SPEECH OF CICERO AGAINST CATALINE. CATALINE! how far art thou to abuse our forbearance? How long are we to be deluded by the mockery of thy madness? Where art thou to stop in this career of unbridled licentiousness? Has the nightly guard at the Palatium nothing in it to alarm you; the patrols throughout the city, nothing; the confusion of the people, nothing; the assemblage of all true lovers of their country, nothing; the guarded majesty of this assembly, nothing; and all the eyes that, at this instant, are riveted upon yourshave they nothing to denounce, nor you to apprehend? Does not your conscience inform you, that the sun shines upon your secrets? and do you not discover a full knowledge of your conspiracy revealed on the countenance of every man around you? Your employment on the last night-your occupations on the preceding night -the place where you met-the persons who met-and the plot fabricated at the meeting-of these things, I ask not who knows; I ask, who, among you all, is ignorant?

But, alas! for the times thus corrupted; or rather for mankind, who thus corrupt the times! The senate knows all this! The consul sees all this! and yet the man who sits there-lives. Lives! ay-comes down to your senate-house; takes his seat, as counsellor for the commonwealth; and, with a deliberate destiny in his eye, marks out our members, and selects them for slaughter; while for us, and for our country, it seems glory sufficient to escape from his fury-to find an asylum from his

sword.

Long, very long, before this late hour, ought I, the consul, to have doomed this ringleader of sedition to an ignominious death-ought I to have overwhelmed you, Catiline, in the ruins of your own machinations. What! did not that great man, the high-priest, Publius Scipioalthough at the time in private station-sacrifice Tiberius Gracchus for daring even to modify our constitution? and shall we, clothed as we are with the plenitude of consular power, endure this nuisance of our nation and our name? Shall we suffer him to put the Roman

Empire to the sword, and lay waste the world, because such is his horrid fancy? With the sanction of so late a precedent, need I obtrude the fate of the innovator, Spurius Melius, immolated at the altar of the constitution, by the hand of Servilius Ahala? There has-yes, there has been, and lately been, a vindicatory virtue, an avenging spirit in this republic, that never failed to inflict speedier and heavier vengeance on a noxious citizen, than on a national foe. Against you, Catiline, and for your immediate condemnation, what, therefore, is wanting? Not the grave sanction of the senate-not the voice of the country-not ancient precedents-not living law. But we are wanting-I say it more loudly-WE, the consuls themselves.

When the senate committed the republic into the hands of the consul L. Opimius, did presumptive sedition palliate the punishment of Caius Gracchus? or could his luminous line of ancestry yield even a momentary protection to his person? Was the vengeance of the executive power on the consular Fulvius and his children arrested for a single night? When similar power was delegated to the consuls C. Marius and L. Valerius, were the lives which the prætor Servilius, and the tribune Saturninus, had forfeited to their country, prolonged for a single day? But now, twenty days and nights have blunted the edge of our axes and our authorities. Our sharp-pointed decree sleeps, sheathed in the record-that very decree which, a moment after its promulgation, was not to find you a living man. You do live; and live, not in the humiliating depression of guilt, but in the exultation and triumph of insolence. Mercy, Conscript Fathers, is my dearest delight, as the vindication of the constitution is my best ambition; but I now stand selfcondemned of guilt in mercy, and I own it as a treachery against the state.

Conscript Fathers, a camp is pitched against the Roman republic, within Italy, on the very borders of Etruria. Every day adds to the number of the enemy. The leader of those enemies, the commander of that encampment, walks within the walls of Rome; takes his

seat in this senate, the heart of Rome; and, with venomous mischief, rankles in the inmost vitals of the commonwealth. Catiline, should I, on the instant, order my lictors to seize and drag you to the stake, some men might, even then, blame me for having procrastinated punishment; but no man could criminate me for a faithful execution of the laws. They shall be executed. But I will neither act, nor will I suffer, without full and sufficient reason. Trust me, they shall be executed; and then, even then, where there shall not be found a man so flagitious, so much a Catiline, as to say you were not ripe for execution. You shall live as long as there is one who has the forehead to say you ought to live; and you shall live, as you live now, under our broad and wakeful eye, and the sword of justice shall keep waving round your head. Without the possibility of hearing, or of seeing, you shall be seen, and heard, and understood.

What is it now you are to expect, if night cannot hide you nor your lurking associates; if the very walls of your own houses resound with the secret, and proclaim it to the world; if the sun shines, and the winds blow upon it? Take my advice: adopt some other plan; wait a more favourable opportunity for setting the city_in flames, and putting its inhabitants to the sword. Yet to convince you that you are beset on every side, I shall enter, for a little, into the detail of your desperations and my discoveries.

Do you not remember, or is it possible you can forget, my declaration on the 21st October last, in the senate, that Caius Manlius, your life-guardsman and confidential bravo, would, on a certain day, take up arms, and this day would be before the 25th? Was I mistaken in the very day selected for a deed so atrocious-so apparently incredible? Did not I, the same man, declare, in this house, that you had conspired the massacre of the principal men in the state upon the 28th, at which time they withdrew, for the sake of repressing your design, rather than on account of safety to themselves? Are you daring enough to deny your being on that very day, so manacled by my power-so entangled by my vigilance,