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20When Catiline saw before him the men whom I mentioned a short time ago, although he had often had long conferences with them individually, he thought that it would be well to address and encourage the entire body. Accordingly, withdrawing to a private room of the house and excluding all witnesses, he made the following speech:
2“If I had not already tested your courage and loyalty, in vain would a great opportunity have presented itself; high hopes and power would have been placed in my hands to no purpose, 3nor would I with the aid of cowards or inconstant hearts grasp at uncertainty in place of certainty. But because I have learned in many and great emergencies that you are brave and faithful to me, my mind has had the courage to set on foot a mighty and glorious enterprise, and also because I perceive that you and I hold the same view of what is good and evil; 4for agreement in likes and dislikes—this, and this only, is what constitutes true friendship. 5As for the designs which I have formed, they have already been explained to you all individually. 6But my resolution is fired more and more every day, when I consider under what conditions we shall live if we do not take steps to emancipate ourselves. 7For ever since the state fell under the jurisdiction and sway of a few powerful men, it is always to them that kings and potentates are tributary and peoples and nations pay taxes. All the rest of us, good and bad, nobles and commons alike, have made up the mob, without influence, without weight, and subservient to those to whom in a free state we should be an object of fear. 8Because of this, all influence, power, rank, and wealth are in their hands, or wherever they wish them to be; to us they have left danger, defeat, prosecutions, and poverty. 9How long, pray, will you endure this, brave hearts? Is it not better to die valiantly, than ignominiously to lose our wretched and dishonoured lives after being the sport of others’ insolence? 10Assuredly (I swear it by the faith of gods and men!) victory is within our grasp. We are in the prime of life, we are stout of heart; to them, on the contrary, years and riches have brought utter dotage. We need only to strike; the rest will take care of itself. 11Pray, what man with the spirit of a man can endure that our tyrants should abound in riches, to squander in building upon the sea and in levelling mountains, while we lack the means to buy the bare necessities of life? That they should join their palaces by twos or even more, while we have nowhere a hearthstone? 12They amass paintings, statuary and chased vases, tear down new structures and erect others, in short misuse and torment their wealth in every way; yet, with the utmost extravagance, they cannot get the upper hand of their riches. 13But we have destitution at home, debt without, present misery and a still more hopeless future; in short, what have we left, save only the wretched breath of life? 14Awake then! Lo, here, here before your eyes, is the freedom for which you have often longed, and with it riches, honour, and glory; Fortune offers all these things as prizes to the victors. 15The undertaking itself, the opportunity, the dangers, your need, the splendid spoils of war, speak louder than any words of mine. 16Use me either as your leader or as a soldier in the ranks; my soul and my body shall be at your service. 17These very schemes I hope to help you carry out as your consul, unless haply I delude myself and you are content to be slaves rather than to rule.”
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