Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

24The want of sufficient evidence, according to Appian, prevented the seizure of Catiline. He therefore set out, during the night, to join Manlius at Fæsulæ, previously directing his accomplices to endeavour to assassinate Cicero and set fire to Rome.

25The army of Manlius was chiefly composed of men who had like himself amassed considerable wealth under Sylla, but which they had dissipated; they were involved in pecuniary difficulties; and there was no class of men against whom the laws were more severe than against debtors. If they could not pay a creditor, or give him ample security, they were given up as slaves. By the laws of the Twelve Tables it was ordained, that when there were several creditors, as it was impossible to satisfy them all, the body of the debtor could even be cut to pieces for that purpose. The greatest severities were also practised at Athens for the recovery of debts: not only the debtor himself, but his children could be seized and sold as slaves in foreign countries, to reimburse the usurer.

26When the news reached Rome of Catiline’s arrival at the camp of Manlius, the whole senate went into mourning, a measure which was usual only in seasons of public calamity; and Dion Cassius says, that the resolution adopted by Cicero, of remaining in the city, and generously giving up his own province to his colleague Antonius, proved, in a great degree the salvation of the commonwealth.

27By the laws of Rome parents possessed an exorbitant power over their children. A father could with impunity suffer his infant son to perish. When grown up, he could imprison, send him bound to work in the country, or even put him to death, without assigning a cause. A son could acquire no property without the consent of his father: so that with a parent of a cruel or capricious temper the condition of a slave was, in some respects, more tolerable. A slave could be freed or emancipated by a single act; but a son, in order to become free, or his own master, was first to be sold into slavery, usually to a friend, and then resold by that friend to the father; after which, being on the footing of a slave, he was to be manumitted with the same formalities. When the son was promoted to any public office the parental authority was suspended, by no means abolished; for it continued to be exercised during the father’s life, not only over his children, but over his grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. A daughter, by marriage, passed from the power of her father to that of her husband. In later times the rigour of these institutions was considerably mitigated.

28A people of Gaul, who inhabited what is now called Dauphiny together with Savoy, Chablais, and Foucigny.

29Cicero, in his third oration against Catiline, addressed to the people, notices this as a singularly fortunate occurrence to the commonwealth. “Your homage and gratitude to the gods have been often due, but never more justly than in the present juncture.”

30The capitol was three times destroyed by fire: first, in the time of Sylla’s wars, and this is probably the period alluded to; secondly, during the wars of Vitellius, when it was rebuilt by Vespasian, at whose death it suffered a third time, and was again repaired and decorated by Domitian.

31Transports of joy were now manifested by all ranks, although the historian appears to confine them to the populace. Cicero received the thanks of the senate, and was hailed as the “father of his country;” a title which no man except himself ever received during the republic, and which the best of the emperors considered as their most distinguished honour.

32The ministers of religion did not form a distinct order in the state, but were usually chosen from among the citizens of the highest rank.

33The speeches of Cæsar and Cato on this occasion, which have been justly ranked as masterpieces of ancient composition, must not be considered merely as the productions of the historian. It is generally admitted that both were addressed to the senate in nearly such terms.

34From the tenor of this passage many writers have been induced to believe that Cæsar inclined to the doctrines of Epicurus; to which Sallust is said to have opposed his own belief of a future state of rewards and punishments.

35The ancient mode of inflicting capital punishment among the Romans was, after stripping the criminal naked, to fix his head by means of a forked piece of wood, and in that situation to scourge him to death. To avoid such a barbarous punishment the Emperor Nero, who was condemned to suffer it, put himself to death.—The Porcian law, here alluded to, prohibited magistrates from punishing a citizen with death, and substituted in its stead banishment and confiscation of property.

36In this and other instances Sallust draws closely after Thucydides, who, in the third book of his History, makes a similar complaint against one of the most corrupt periods of the Grecian manners.

37The idea of bringing the characters of Cato and Cæsar into comparison did not originate with Sallust. A few years before, A.U. 707, Cicero wrote “A Eulogium on Cato,” in which he took an elaborate review of the life of that extraordinary man, in his private, his political and moral character, and extolled him in the warmest terms, as having left no equal behind him. This tract gave rise to much controversy on the subject; and the names of these great men being brought into competition, in a celebrated period, their merits formed a sort of political test to every succeeding age of the empire.

38In the time of Polybius the Roman legion consisted of four thousand two hundred men; but under Julius Cæsar, and the succeeding emperors, it extended to no fewer than six thousand, or six thousand one hundred, together with the usual complement of three hundred horse. Each legion was divided into ten cohorts, each cohort into three maniples, and each maniple into two centuries. When the century consisted, as its name imports, of a hundred men, the complement of six thousand was accurately made out. According to this establishment, Catiline’s forces did not exceed twelve thousand six hundred men.

39This was consistent with the policy of the Romans: they considered that the commonwealth could never be defended, except by men who felt some interest in its preservation. Slaves were therefore prohibited, under pain of death, from joining the army.

40It would be difficult to select from any ancient historian an address from a general to his soldiers equal to the speech of Catiline. That which Tacitus gives to Galgacus, in the Life of Agricola, has been often extolled; but, with the reader of taste, it will not stand the comparison, either for vigour, or spirit, or perfect verisimilitude.

41The battle of Pistoria, which this action has been called, derived its name from Pistoria, now Pistoia, a considerable district and town in Tuscany. The latter is situated on the river Stella, about twenty miles north-west of Florence.

42This person is named Furius by Plutarch; and Cicero makes mention of him as one of the ringleaders of the conspiracy.

43The Romans made use of various devices as standards, or colours; the eagle only was composed of metal, often of gold or silver, and was worshipped by the soldiers with religious reverence.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Marcus Tullius Cicero, orator, statesman and philosopher, is the great commanding figure of the literary period which is designated by his name. With him Latin prose reaches a height never before attained and never afterward surpassed. The cooler and more critical judgment of our northern natures and later age may find his eloquence too exuberant, and our scholars, trained in the study of the Greek philosophers, may deny him the title of an original thinker, but no one can fail to appreciate the power of his utterance, the clearness of his exposition, or the lucid elegance of his diction. He found the Latin language the chief dialect of Italy, the speech of a great and mighty city; he made it the language of the world for centuries.