gratitude would be paid.

Now we come to the fourth or last Catiline oration, which was made to
the Senate, convened on the 5th of December with the purpose of deciding
the fate of the leading conspirators who were held in custody. We learn
to what purport were three of the speeches made during this
debate--those of Caesar and of Cato and of Cicero. The first two are
given to us by Sallust, but we can hardly think that we have the exact
words. The Caesarean spirit which induced Sallust to ignore altogether
the words of Cicero would have induced him to give his own
representation of the other two, even though we were to suppose that he
had been able to have them taken down by short-hand writers--Cicero's
words, we have no doubt, with such polishing as may have been added to
the short-hand writers' notes by Tiro, his slave and secretary. The
three are compatible each with the other, and we are entitled to believe
that we know the line of argument used by the three orators.

Silanus, one of the Consuls elect, began the debate by counselling
death. We may take it for granted that he had been persuaded by Cicero
to make this proposition. During the discussion he trembled at the
consequences, and declared himself for an adjournment of their decision
till they should have dealt with Catiline. Murena, the other Consul
elect, and Catulus, the Prince of the Senate,[209] spoke for death.
Tiberius Nero, grandfather of Tiberius the Emperor, made that
proposition for adjournment to which Silanus gave way. Then--or I should
rather say in the course of the debate, for we do not know who else may
have spoken--Caesar got up and made his proposition. His purpose was to
save the victims, but he knew well that, with such a spirit abroad as
that existing in the Senate and the city, he could only do so not by
absolving but by condemning. Wicked as these men might be, abominably
wicked it was, he said, for the Senate to think of their own dignity
rather than of the enormity of the crime. As they could not, he
suggested, invent any new punishment adequate to so abominable a crime,
it would be better that they should leave the conspirators to be dealt
with by the ordinary laws. It was thus that, cunningly, he threw out the
idea that as Senators they had no power of death. He did not dare to
tell them directly that any danger would menace them, but he exposed the
danger skilfully before their eyes. "Their crimes," he says again,
"deserve worse t