embarrassment was how to reconcile this position with his
personal loyalty to Pompey, and his views as to the reforms necessary in
the government of the provinces.

[Sidenote: The Consulship, B.C. 63.]

For the momentous year of the consulship we have no letters. His brother
Quintus was in Rome as candidate and then praetor-designate; Atticus was
also in Rome; and the business, as well as the dignity of a consul, were
against anything like ordinary correspondence. Of the earlier part of
the consulship we have little record. The speeches against Rullus were
delivered at the beginning of the year, and commit Cicero pretty
definitely to a policy as to the _ager publicus_--which was, to his
disgust, entirely reversed by the triumvirs in B.C. 59--but they do not
shew any sense of coming trouble. Cicero, however, throughout his
consulship took a very definite line against the _populares_. Not only
did he defend Rabirius Postumus, when accused by Caesar of the
assassination of Saturninus, and address the people against offering
violence to L. Roscius on account of the unpopular _lex theatralis_,[6]
but he even resisted the restoration to their civil rights of the sons
of the men proscribed by Sulla, avowedly on the ground of the necessity
of maintaining the established order, though he knew and confessed the
justice of the proposal.[6]

[Sidenote: The Conspiracy of Catiline.]

Any movement, therefore, on the side of the popular party had now his
opposition with which to reckon. He professes to have known very early
in his year of office that some more than usually dangerous movement was
in contemplation. We cannot well decide from the violent denunciation of
Catiline contained--to judge from extant fragments--in the speech _in
toga candida_, how far Cicero was really acquainted with any definite
designs of his. Roman orators indulged in a violence of language so
alien from modern ideas and habits, that it is difficult to draw
definite conclusions. But it appears from Sallust that Catiline had in a
secret meeting before the elections of B.C. 64, professed an intention
of going all lengths in a revolutionary programme and, if that was the
case, Cicero would be sure to have had some secret information on the
subject. But his hands were partly tied by the fact that the _comitia_
had given him a colleague--C. Antonius--deeply implicated in Catiline's
policy, whatever it was. Pompey, whom he regarded as the champion of law
and