Literature and pleasure had occupied his youth, and only now was he beginning to take an active part in public affairs, although with a force and earnestness which at once marked him out as a man who was to lead. With chivalrous recklessness of consequences, he had done justice to his uncle’s memory at a time when it was hardly safe to mention the name of Marius; and now the relics of the Marian party gathered round him with hope, while the oligarchy and aristocracy, with the presentiment of what he was to become, would fain have crushed him. Nine years older than Cæsar, and three years older than Cicero or Pompey, was the leader of the fourth or military faction――Lucius Sergius Catilina, more commonly called Catiline, a man of illustrious birth, and who had distinguished himself as one of the ablest and most ferocious officers of Sulla. His reputation, owing partly to his haggard personal appearance, and partly to vague rumors of horrible crimes which he had committed, was one of the blackest; and as he walked along the streets with gigantic body, but hurried and uncertain step, men pointed, and said that that was Catiline. Yet he possessed extraordinary abilities, and a peculiar power of fascinating those with whom he wished to establish a friendly relation. He had already been prætor (B. C. 67), and there was a large class, consisting principally of debauched young patricians and ruined military men, who looked forward eagerly to his election to the consulship. Prevented, by a charge of extortion brought against him in his capacity of prætor, from becoming a candidate for the consulship of the year B. C. 65, Catiline came forward as candidate in the following year. Cicero was his rival; and the senators mustered in sufficient strength to return the orator. Enraged at his defeat, Catiline began to plot a seditious movement with his patrician adherents, among whom were Lentulus, Cethegus, Cæparius, etc. Rome, it was said, was to be set on fire, and the consuls and many of the senators murdered. Towards the end of the year (B. C. 64), these designs had become ripe, and emissaries of Catiline were abroad throughout Italy. Meanwhile Cicero had obtained private intelligence of the conspiracy, and on the 8th of November he addressed Catiline in such vehement terms in the senate-house, that the conspirator fled into Etruria, from which he continued to correspond with his accomplices in Rome. Having obtained satisfactory proofs of the guilt of these accomplices, and having been empowered by the senate to act as he chose for the good of state, Cicero caused Lentulus, Cethegus, Statilius, and Cæparius to be apprehended; and these four, notwithstanding the motion of Cæsar for a more moderate punishment, were put to death in prison; Cicero’s activity had saved the Commonwealth. Catiline, however, who had raised troops in Etruria, continued to menace the state till the beginning of B. C. 62, when he and many of his patrician supporters died fighting