We are easily convinced that Cæsar was not a conspirator; but this accusation is explained by the pusillanimity of some and the rancour of others. Who does not know that in times of crisis, feeble governments always tax sympathy for the accused with complicity, and are not sparing of calumny towards their adversaries? Q. Catulus and C. Piso were animated against him with so deep a hatred that they had importuned the consul to include him in the prosecutions directed against the accomplices of Catiline. Cicero resisted. The report of his participation in the plot was not the less spread, and had been accredited eagerly by the crowd of the envious.[978] Cæsar was not one of the conspirators; if he had been, his influence would have been sufficient to have acquitted them triumphantly.[979] He had too high an idea of himself; he enjoyed too great a consideration to think of arriving at power by an underground way and reprehensible means. However ambitious a man may be, he does not conspire when he can attain his end by lawful means. Cæsar was quite sure of being raised to the consulship, and his impatience never betrayed his ambition. Moreover, he had constantly shown a marked aversion to civil war; and why should he throw himself into a vulgar conspiracy with infamous individuals, he who refused his participation in the attempts of Lepidus when at the head of an army? If Cicero had believed Cæsar guilty, would he have hesitated to accuse him, seeing he scrupled not to compromise, by the aid of a false witness, so high a personage as Licinius Crassus?[980] How, on the eve of the condemnation, could he have trusted to Cæsar the custody of one of the conspirators? Would he have exculpated him in the sequel when the accusation was renewed? Lastly, if Cæsar, as will be seen afterwards, according to Plutarch, preferred being the first in a village in the Alps to being second in Rome, how could he have consented to be the second to Catiline? The attitude of Cæsar in this matter presents nothing, then, which does not admit an easy explanation. Whilst blaming the conspiracy, he was unwilling that, to repress it, the eternal rules of justice should be set aside. He reminded men, blinded by passion and fear, that unnecessary rigour is always followed by fatal reactions. The examples drawn from history served him to prove that moderation is always the best adviser. It is clear also that, whilst despising most of the authors of the conspiracy, he was not without sympathy for a cause which approached his own by common instincts and enemies. In countries delivered up to party divisions, how many men are there not who desire the overthrow of the existing government, yet without the will to take part in a conspiracy? Such was the position of Cæsar.