"The noblest of our citizens have conspired to put the torch to the republic. They have called to their aid, in open war, the Gallic nation most hostile to the name of Roman. The chief of your enemy is thundering above your very heads; and are you hesitating even now what you shall do with enemies taken within your very walls?—Oh! you had better pity them, I think—the poor young men have only erred a little, misled by ambition—you had better send them away in arms! I swear that, should they once take those arms, that clemency and mercifulness of yours will be changed into wo and wailing. Forsooth, it is a desperate crisis; and yet you fear it not. Yea, by the Gods! but you do fear it vehemently. Yet, in your indolence and feebleness of mind, waiting the one upon the other, you hesitate, relying, I presume, on the protection of the Immortals, who have so many times preserved this republic in its greatest dangers. The aid of the Gods is not gained by prayers or womanish supplication. To those who watch, who act, who take counsel, wisely, all things turn out successful. Yield yourselves up to idleness and sloth, and in vain you shall implore the Gods—they are irate and hostile. "In the time of our forefathers, Titus Manlius Torquatus during the Gallic war commanded his own son to be slain, because he had fought against orders; and that illustrious youth suffered the penalty of his immoderate valor.—Do ye know this, and delay what ye shall decide against the cruellest parricides? Is it forsooth that the lives of these men are in their character repugnant to this guilt.—Oh! spare the dignity of Lentulus, if he have ever spared his own modesty, his own good report; if he have ever spared any man or any God! Oh! pardon the youth of Cethegus, if this be not the second time that he has waged war on his country. For wherefore should I speak of Gabinius, Statilius or Cæparius?—who if they ever felt any care for the republic, would never have taken these councils. To conclude, Conscript Fathers, if there were any space for a mistake, I would leave you right willingly, by Hercules, to be corrected by facts, since you will not be warned by words! But we are hemmed in on all sides. Catiline with his army is at our very throats—others of our foes are within our walls in the bosom of the state. Nothing can be prepared, nor any counsel taken, so privately but they must know it.—Wherefore I shall vote thus, seeing that the republic is plunged into most fearful peril by the guilty plot of atrocious citizens, seeing that these men are convicted on the evidence of Titus Volturcius, and of the ambassadors of the Allobroges, and seeing that they have confessed the intent of murder, conflagration, and other foul and barbarous crimes, against their fellow citizens and native country—I shall vote, I say, that execution, according to the custom of our ancestors, be done upon them having thus confessed, as upon men manifestly convicted of capital treason."