XXII. There were some, at the time, who said that Catiline, having
ended his speech, and wishing to bind his accomplices in guilt by an
oath, handed round among them, in goblets, the blood of a human body
mixed with wine; and that when all, after an imprecation, had tasted
of it, as is usual in sacred rites, he disclosed his design; and they
asserted[130] that he did this, in order that they might be the more
closely attached to one another, by being mutually conscious of such
an atrocity. But some thought that this report, and many others, were
invented by persons who supposed that the odium against Cicero, which
afterward arose, might be lessened by imputing an enormity of guilt to
the conspirators who had suffered death. The evidence which I have
obtained, in support of this charge, is not at all in proportion to
its magnitude.

XXIII. Among those present at this meeting was Quintus Curius,[131] a
man of no mean family, but immersed in vices and crimes, and whom the
censors had ignominiously expelled from the senate. In this person
there was not less levity than impudence; he could neither keep secret
what he heard, not conceal his own crimes; he was altogether heedless
what he said or what he did. He had long had a criminal intercourse
with Fulvia, a woman of high birth; but growing less acceptable to her,
because, in his reduced circumstances, he had less means of being
liberal, he began, on a sudden, to boast, and to promise her seas and
mountains;[132] threatening her, at times, with the sword, if she were
not submissive to his will; and acting, in his general conduct, with
greater arrogance than ever.[133] Fulvia, having learned the cause of
his extravagant behavior, did not keep such danger to the state a
secret; but, without naming her informant, communicated to several
persons what she had heard and under what circumstances, concerning
Catiline's conspiracy. This intelligence it was that incited the