Catiline's War, 15

Sallust  translated by J. C. Rolfe

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15Even in youth Catiline had many shameful intrigues—with a maiden of noble rank, with a priestess of Vesta—and other affairs equally unlawful and impious. 2At last he was seized with a passion for Aurelia Orestilla, in whom no good man ever commended anything save her beauty; and when she hesitated to marry him because she was afraid of his stepson, then a grown man, it is generally believed that he murdered the young man in order to make an empty house for this criminal marriage. 3In fact, I think that this was his special motive for hastening his plot; 4for his guilt-stained soul, at odds with gods and men, could find rest neither waking nor sleeping, so cruelly did conscience ravage his overwrought mind. 5Hence his pallid complexion, his bloodshot eyes, his gait now fast, now slow; in short, his face and his every glance showed the madman.

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