e of one Marcus Porcius Laeca, at which a plot was arranged for
the killing of Cicero the next day--for the killing of Cicero alone--he
having been by this time found to be the one great obstacle in their
path. Two knights were told off for the service, named Vargunteius and
Cornelius. These, after the Roman fashion, were to make their way early
on the following morning into the Consul's bedroom for the ostensible
purpose of paying him their morning compliments, but, when there, they
were to slay him. All this, however, was told to Cicero, and the two
knights, when they came, were refused admittance. If Cicero had been a
man given to fear, as has been said of him, he must have passed a
wretched life at this period. As far as I can judge of his words and
doings throughout his life, he was not harassed by constitutional
timidity. He feared to disgrace his name, to lower his authority, to
become small in the eyes of men, to make political mistakes, to do that
which might turn against him. In much of this there was a falling off
from that dignity which, if we do not often find it in a man, we can all
of us imagine; but of personal dread as to his own skin, as to his own
life, there was very little. At this time, when, as he knew well, many
men with many weapons in their hands, men who were altogether
unscrupulous, were in search for his blood he never seems to have
trembled.

But all Rome trembled--even according to Sallust. I have already shown
how he declares in one part of his narrative that the common people as a
body were with Catiline, and have attempted to explain what was meant by
that expression. In another, in an earlier chapter, he says "that the
State," meaning the city, "was disturbed by all this, and its appearance
changed.[198] Instead of the joy and ease which had lately prevailed,
the effect of the long peace, a sudden sadness fell upon every one." I
quote the passage because that other passage has been taken as proving
the popularity of Catiline. There can, I think, be no doubt that the
population of Rome was, as a body, afraid of Catiline. The city was to
be burnt down, the Consuls and the Senate were to be murdered, debts
were to be wiped out, slaves were probably to be encouraged against
their masters. The "permota civitas" and the "cuncta plebes," of which
Sallust speaks, mean that all the "householders" were disturbed, and
that all the "roughs" were eager with revolutionary hopes.

On the 8th of Nove