The reader must bear in mind that I am now telling the story of Catiline, and going back to a period of two years before Cicero's Consulship, which was B.C. 63. How during that year Cicero successfully defended Murena when Cato endeavored to rob him of his coming Consulship, has been already told. It may be that Murena's hands were no cleaner than those of Sulla and Autronius, and that they lacked only the consular authority and forensic eloquence of the advocate who defended Murena. At this time, when the two appointed Consuls were rejected, Cicero had hardly as yet taken any part in public politics. He had been Quæstor, Ædile, and Prætor, filling those administrative offices to the best of his ability. He had, he says, hardly heard of the first conspiracy.[189] That what he says is true, is, I think, proved by the absence of all allusion to it in his early letters, or in the speeches or fragments of speeches that are extant. But that there was such a conspiracy we cannot doubt, nor that the three men named, Catiline, Sulla, and Autronius, were leaders in it. What would interest us, if only we could have the truth, is whether Cæsar and Crassus were joined in it. It is necessary again to consider the condition of the Republic. To us a conspiracy to subvert the government under which the conspirer lives seems either a very terrible remedy for great evils, or an attempt to do evil which all good men should oppose. We have the happy conspiracy in which Washington became the military leader, and the French Revolution, which, bloody as it was, succeeded in rescuing Frenchmen from the condition of serfdom. At home we have our own conspiracy against the Stuart royalty, which had also noble results. The Gracchi had attempted to effect something of the same kind at Rome; but the moral condition of the people had become so low that no real love of liberty remained. Conspiracy! oh yes. As long as there was anything to get, of course he who had not got it would conspire against him who had. There had been conspiracies for and against Marius, for and against Cinna, for and against Sulla. There was a grasping for plunder, a thirst for power which meant luxury, a greed for blood which grew from the hatred which such rivalry produced. These were the motive causes for conspiracies; not whether Romans should be free but whether a Sulla or a Cotta should be allowed to run riot in a province.