be recovered and the bad eliminated. Marius and Sulla--Pompey
also, toward the end of his career, if I can read his character
rightly--Caesar, and of course Augustus, being all destitute of
scruple, strove to acquire, each for himself, the power which the weak
hands of the Senate were unable to grasp. However much, or however
little, the country of itself might have been to any of them, it
seemed good to him, whether for the country's sake or for his own,
that the rule should be in his own hands. Each had the opportunity,
and each used it, or tried to use it. With Cicero there is always
present the longing to restore the power to the old constitutional
possessors of it. So much is admitted, even by his bitter enemies; and
I am sometimes at a loss whether to wonder most that a man of letters,
dead two thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter or a friend
so keenly in earnest about him as I am. Cicero was aware quite as well
as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter clearer even than
any others, that there was much that was rotten in the State. Men
who had been murderers on behalf of Marius, and then others who had
murdered on behalf of Sulla--among whom that Catiline, of whom we have
to speak presently, had been one--were not apt to settle themselves
down as quiet citizens. The laws had been set aside. Even the law
courts had been closed. Sulla had been law, and the closests of
his favorites had been the law courts. Senators had been cowed and
obedient. The Tribunes had only been mock Tribunes. Rome, when Cicero
began his public life, was still trembling. The Consuls of the day
were men chosen at Sulla's command. The army was Sulla's army. The
courts were now again opened by Sulla's permission. The day fixed by
Sulla when murderers might no longer murder--or, at any rate, should
not be paid for murdering--had arrived. There was not, one would say,
much hope for good things. But Sulla had reproduced the signs of
order, and the best hope lay in that direction. Consuls, Praetors,