Catiline and his clients were not a hundred paces distant from Cicero, and the assembled nobles. They had halted! Their hands were busy in the bosom of their gowns, griping the hilts of their assassin’s tools! Cethegus and his gladiators were not a hundred paces distant from the bridge-gate of the Janiculum, and the cohort’s bannered eagle. They, too, had halted! they, too, were forming in battle order—they too were mustering their breath for the dread onset—they too were handling their war weapons! Almost had Caius Crispus, in his mad triumph, shouted victory. One moment, and Rome had been the prize for the winner in the gladiators’ battle. And the notes of the brazen trumpets had not yet died away, among the echoing hills. They had not died away, before they were taken up and repeated, east, west, and north and south, by shriller, more pervading clangors. It burst over the heads of the astonished people like heaven’s thunder, the wild prolonged war-flourish of the legions. From the Tarpeian rock, and the guarded Capitol; from the rampired Janiculum; from the fortress, beyond the Island bridge; from the towered steeps of the Quirinal, broke simultaneously the well known Roman war note! Upsprang, along the turreted wall of the Janiculum, with crested casques, and burnished brazen corslets, and the tremendous javelins of the cohorts, a long line of Metellus’ legionaries. Upsprang on the heights of the Capitol, and on each point of vantage, an answering band of warriors, full armed. And, last not least, as that warlike din smote the sky, Cicero, on whom every eye was riveted of that vast concourse, flung back his toga, and stood forth conspicuous, armed with a mighty breastplate, and girded with the sword that won him, at an after day, among the mountains of Cilicia, the high style of Imperator. A mighty shout burst from the faithful ranks of the knights; and, starting from their scabbards, five thousand sword-blades flashed in a trusty ring around the savior of his country. "Catiline would have murdered Him!" shouted the voice of Fulvius Flaccus—"Catiline would have burned your workshops! Catiline would have made himself Dictator, King! Vote, men of Rome, vote, friends of the people I vote now, I say, for Catiline!" Anticipated, frustrated, outwitted,—the conspirators glared on each other hopeless. Against forces so combined, what chance of success? Still, although ruined in his hopes, Catiline bore up bravely, and with an insolence of hardihood that in a good cause had been heroism. Affecting to laugh at the precautions, and sneer at the pusillanimous mind that had suggested them, he defied proof, defied suspicion. There was no overt act—no proof! and Cicero, satisfied with his triumph—for alarmed beyond measure, and astonished, all ranks and classes vied with each other in voting for Silanus and Muræna—took no step to arrest or convict the ringleaders. It was a moral, not a physical victory, at which he had aimed so nobly.