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18Now, even before that time a few men had conspired against the government, and among them was Catiline; 2of that affair I shall give as true an account as I am able.
In the consulship of Lucius Tullus and Manius Lepidus, the consuls elect, Publius Autronius and Publius Sulla, were arraigned under the law against bribery and paid the penalties. 3A little later Catiline was charged with extortion and prevented from standing for the consulship, because he had been unable to announce his candidacy within the prescribed number of days. 4There was at that same time a young noble called Gnaeus Piso, a man of the utmost recklessness, poor, and given to intrigue, who was being goaded on by need of funds and an evil character to overthrow the government. 5He revealed his plans to Catiline and Autronius; they in concert with him began, about the fifth of December, to make preparations to murder the consuls Lucius Cotta and Lucius Torquatus in the Capitol on the first of January; they then proposed that they themselves should seize the fasces and dispatch Piso with an army to take possession of the two Spanish provinces. 6Upon the discovery of their plot they postponed their murderous design until the fifth of February. 7At that time they plotted the destruction not merely of the consuls but of many of the senators, 8and had Catiline not been over-hasty in giving the signal to his accomplices in front of the senate-house, on that day the most dreadful crime since the founding of the city of Rome would have been perpetrated. But because the armed conspirators had not yet assembled in sufficient numbers, the affair came to naught.
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