as yet of unblemished character, fell into his society, he was
presently rendered, by daily intercourse and temptation, similar and
equal to the rest. But it was the young whose acquaintance he chiefly
courted; as their minds, ductile and unsettled from their age, were
easily insnared by his stratagems. For as the passions of each,
according to his years, appeared excited, he furnished mistresses to
some, bought horses and dogs for others, and spared, in a word,
neither his purse nor his character, if he could but make them his
devoted and trustworthy supporters. There were some, I know, who
thought that the youth, who frequented the house of Catiline, were
guilty of crimes against nature; but this report arose rather from
other causes than from any evidence of the fact[80].

XV. Catiline, in his youth, had been guilty of many criminal
connections, with a virgin of noble birth[81], with a priestess of
Vesta[82], and of many other offenses of this nature, in defiance
alike of law and religion. At last, when he was smitten with a passion
for Aurelia Orestilla[83], in whom no good man, at any time of her
life, commended any thing but her beauty, it is confidently believed
that because she hesitated to marry him, from the dread of having a
grown-up step-son[84], he cleared the house for their nuptials by
putting his son to death. And this crime appears to me to have been
the chief cause of hurrying forward the conspiracy. For his guilty
mind, at peace with neither gods nor men, found no comfort either
waking or sleeping; so effectually did conscience desolate his
tortured spirit.[85] His complexion, in consequence, was pale, his
eyes haggard, his walk sometimes quick and sometimes slow, and
distraction was plainly apparent in every feature and look.

XVI. The young men, whom, as I said before, he had enticed to join