translation.

[140] By no means despicable--_Haud absurdum._ Compare, _Bene dicere
haud absurdum est,_ c. 8.

[141] She was distinguished, etc.--_Multae facetiae, multusque lepos
inerat._ Both _facetiae_ and _lepos_ mean "agreeableness, humor,
pleasantry," but _lepos_ here seems to refer to diction, as in Cic.
Orat. i. 7: _Magnus in jocando lepos._

[142] XXVI. By an arrangement respecting their provinces--_Pactione
provinciae_. This passage has been absurdly misrepresented by most
translators, except De Brosses. Even Rose, who was a scholar, translated
_pactione provinciae_, "by promising a province to his colleague."
Plutarch, in his Life of Cicero, says that the two provinces, which
Cicero and his colleague Antonius shared between them, were Gaul and
Macedonia, and that Cicero, in order to retain Antonius in the interest
of the senate, exchanged with him Macedonia, which had fallen to himself,
for the inferior province of Gaul. See Jug., c. 27.

[143] Plots which he had laid for the consuls in the Campus Martius
--_Insidiae quas consuli in campo fecerat_. I have here departed from
the text of Cortius, who reads _consulibus_, thinking that Catiline, in
his rage, might have extended his plots even to the consuls-elect. But
_consuli_, there is little doubt, is the right reading, as it is favored
by what is said at the beginning of the chapter, _insidias parabat
Ciceroni_, by what follows in the next chapter, _consuli insidias tendere_,
and by the words, _sperans, si designatus foret, facile se ex voluntate
Antonio usurum_; for if Catiline trusted that he should be able to use
his pleasure with Antonius, he could hardly think it necessary to form