Of the Catilinarians, the first and fourth were delivered in the senate, the second and third in the presence of the people. Every one knows the burst of indignation which the consul, rising in his place, aims at the audacious conspirator who dared to pollute with his presence the temple of the deity, and the most august assembly of the Roman people. In less than twenty-four hours Catiline had left Rome, and the conspiracy had become a war. In four words Cicero announced this to the assembled Romans the day after he had addressed the senate. The third is a piece of self-complacent but pardonable egotism. Success has overwhelmed him—he sees that all eyes are turned upon himself—he is the hero of his own story; still he demands no reward but the approbation of his fellow-citizens, and reminds them that to the gods alone their gratitude is due. Two days pass away, and after Cæsar and Cicero had spoken, Cicero again addresses the senate, and recommends that measure which was the beginning of his troubles, the condemnation of the conspirators. The zeal of the senate made the act their own, but Cicero paid the penalty. The position which Cicero occupies on this occasion invests his speech with more dignity than is displayed in any of the preceding. He is the chief magistrate of the republic, performing the duty of pronouncing a capital sentence on the guilty. The excitement of the crisis is subsiding; and he has the more composure, because he knows that he carries with him the sympathies of the senate and people. The Philippics, so named after the orations of Demosthenes, are fourteen in number. Cicero commenced his attack[827] upon the object of his implacable hatred with a defence of the laws of Cæsar, which Antony wished to repeal. He followed it up with the celebrated second oration, in which he demolished the character of Antony; a speech which Juvenal pronounced to be his _chef-d’œuvre_, but which Niebuhr thought was undeserving of being so highly exalted. He delivered the remaining twelve in the course of the succeeding year; they were the last monuments of his eloquence; he never spoke again. The fourteenth is a brilliant panegyric, but nothing more; the gallant army of Octavius received their deserved applause; but in this political crisis the orator could not discern or even catch a glimpse of the future destinies of his country.