On the contrary, the conduct of Cicero and of the Senate can hardly be justified. To violate the law was perhaps a necessity; but to misrepresent the sedition in order to make it odious, to have recourse to calumny to vilify the criminals, and to condemn them to death without allowing them a defence, was an evident proof of weakness. In fact, if the intentions of Catiline had not been disguised, the whole of Italy would have responded to his appeal, so weary were people of the humiliating yoke which weighed upon Rome; but they proclaimed him as one meditating conflagration, murder, and pillage. “Already,” it was said, “the torches are lit, the assassins are at their posts, the conspirators drink human blood, and dispute over the shreds of a man they have butchered.”[981] It was by these rumours dexterously spread, by these exaggerations which Cicero himself afterwards ridiculed,[982] that the disposition of the people, at first favourable to the insurrection, soon turned against it.[983] That Catiline might have associated, like all promoters of revolutions, with men who had nothing to lose and everything to gain, cannot be disputed; but how can we believe that the majority of his accomplices was composed of criminals loaded with vices? By the confession of Cicero, many honourable individuals figured amongst the conspirators.[984] Inhabitants of colonies and municipia belonging to the first families in their country, allied themselves with Catiline. Many sons of senators, and amongst others Aulus Fulvius,[985] were arrested on their way to join the insurgents, and put to death by the order of their fathers. Nearly all the Roman youth, says Sallust, favoured at that time the designs of the bold conspirator, and, on the other hand, throughout the whole empire, the populace, eager for novelty, approved of his enterprise.[986]