some gladiator, or robber, or Catiline, and not against a man who had prevented any such step from ever being taken in the republic.  Was I, who defeated and overthrew and crushed Catiline, when he was attempting such wickedness, a likely man myself all on a sudden to turn out Catiline?  Under what auspices could I, an augur, take those fasces?  How long should I have been likely to keep them? to whom was I to deliver them as my successor?  The idea of any one having been so wicked as to invent such a tale! or so mad as to believe it!  In what could such a suspicion, or rather such gossip, have originated?

Vi.  When, as you know, during the last three or four days a report of bad news from Mutina has been creeping abroad, the disloyal part of the citizens, inflated with exultation and insolence, began to collect in one place, at that senate-house which has been more fatal to their party than to the republic.  There, while they were forming a plan to massacre us, and were distributing the different duties among one another, and settling who was to seize on the Capitol, who on the rostra, who on the gates of the city, they thought that all the citizens would flock to me.  And in order to bring me into unpopularity, and even into danger of my life, they spread abroad this report about the fasces.  They themselves had some idea of bringing the fasces to my house; and then, on pretence of that having been done by my wish, they had prepared a band of hired ruffians to make an attack on me as on a tyrant, and a massacre of all of you was intended to follow.  The fact is already notorious, O conscript fathers, but the origin of all this wickedness will be revealed in its fitting time.

Therefore Publius Apuleius, a tribune of the people, who ever since my consulship has been the witness and partaker of, and my assistant in all my designs and all my dangers could not endure the grief of witnessing my indignation.  He convened a numerous assembly, as the whole Roman people were animated with one feeling on the subject.  And when in the harangue which he then made, he, as was natural from our great intimacy and friendship, was going to exculpate me from all suspicion in the matter of the fasces, the whole assembly cried out with one voice, that I had never had any intentions with regard to the republic which were not excellent.  After this assembly was over, within two or three hours, these most welcome messengers and letters arrived; so that the same day not only delivered me from a most unjust odium, but increased my credit by that most extraordinary act with which the Roman people distinguished me.

I have made this digression, O conscript fathers, not so much for the sake of speaking of myself, (for I should be in a sorry plight if I were not sufficiently acquitted in your eyes without the necessity of making a formal defence,) as with the view of warning some men of too grovelling and narrow minds, to adopt the line of conduct which I myself have always pursued, and to think the virtue of excellent citizens worthy of imitation, not of envy.  There is a great field in the republic, as Crassus used very wisely to say; the road to glory is open to many.