the aristocracy with criminal
impeachments on account of an alleged plot for the murder of Pompeius,
and so to drive them into exile, was frustrated by the incapacity
of the instruments; the informer, one Vettius, exaggerated
and contradicted himself so grossly, and the tribune Vatinius,
who directed the foul scheme, showed his complicity with that Vettius
so clearly, that it was found advisable to strangle the latter
in prison and to let the whole matter drop. On this occasion however
they had obtained sufficient evidence of the total disorganization
of the aristocracy and the boundless alarm of the genteel lords:
even a man like Lucius Lucullus had thrown himself in person
at Caesar's feet and publicly declared that he found himself compelled
by reason of his great age to withdraw from public life.

Cato and Cicero Removed

Ultimately therefore they were content with a few isolated victims.
It was of primary importance to remove Cato, who made no secret
of his conviction as to the nullity of all the Julian laws,
and who was a man to act as he thought. Such a man Marcus Cicero
was certainly not, and they did not give themselves the trouble
to fear him. But the democratic party, which played the leading part
in the coalition, could not possibly after its victory leave
unpunished the judicial murder of the 5th December 691, which it
had so loudly and so justly censured. Had they wished to bring
to account the real authors of the fatal decree, they ought
to have seized not on the pusillanimous consul, but on the section
of the strict aristocracy which had urged the timorous man
to that execution. But in formal law it was certainly not the advisers
of the consul, but the consul himself, that was responsible for it,
and it was above all the gentler course to call the consul alone
to account and to leave the senatorial college wholly out of the case;
for which reason in the grounds of the proposal directed against
Cicero the decree of the senate, in virtue of which he ordered
the execution, was directly described as supposititious. Even against
Cicero the holders of power would gladly have avoided steps
that attracted attention; but he could not prevail on himself either
to give to those in power the guarantees which they required,
or to banish himself from Rome under one of the feasible pretexts
on several occasions offered to him, or even to keep silence.
With the utmost desire to avoid any offence and the most si