ed to murder Cicero, he was, in
accordance with the practice of his days, not much to be blamed for
that; and that he was simply the follower of the Gracchi, and the
forerunner of Caesar in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of Rome.[177]
In this there is much that is true. Murder was common. He who had seen
the Sullan proscriptions, as both Catiline and Cicero had done, might
well have learned to feel less scrupulous as to blood than we do in
these days. Even Cicero, who of all the Romans was the most humane--even
he, no doubt, would have been well contented that Catiline should have
been destroyed by the people.[178] Even he was the cause, as we shall
see just now, of the execution of the leaders of the conspirators whom
Catiline left behind him in the city--an execution of which the legality
is at any rate very doubtful. But in judging even of bloodshed we have
to regard the circumstances of the time in the verdicts we give. Our
consciousness of altered manners and of the growth of gentleness force
this upon us. We cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered Caesar as
we would do those who might now plot the death of a tyrant; nor can we
deal as heavily with the murderers of Caesar as we would have done then
with Catilinarian conspirators in Rome, had Catiline's conspiracy
succeeded. And so, too, in acknowledging that Catiline was the outcome
of the Gracchi, and to some extent the preparation for Caesar, we must
again compare him with them, his motives and designs with theirs, before
we can allow ourselves to sympathize with him, because there was much in
them worthy of praise and honor.

That the Gracchi were seditious no historian has, I think, denied. They
were willing to use the usages and laws of the Republic where those
usages and laws assisted them, but as willing to act illegally when the
usages and laws ran counter to them. In the reforms or changes which
they attempted they were undoubtedly rebels; but no reader comes across
the tale of the death, first of one and then of the other, without a
regret. It has to be owned that they were murdered in tumults which they
themselves had occasioned. But they were honest and patriotic. History
has declared of them that their efforts were made with the real purport
of relieving their fellow-countrymen from what they believed to be the
tyranny of oligarchs. The Republic even in their time had become too
rotten to be saved; but the world has not the less given them the