[2] "Asia vero tam opima est et fertilis, ut et ubertate agrorum et
varietate fructuum et magnitudine pastionis, et multitudine earum
rerum, quae exportentur, facile omnibus terris antecellat."--_Pro
Lege Manilia_. Cicero's expressions are worth notice at a time when
Asia Minor has become of importance to England.
[3] _Pro Lege Manilia_. abridged.
CHAPTER XI.
[Sidenote: B.C. 64.]
Among the patricians who were rising through the lower magistracies and
were aspiring to the consulship was Lucius Sergius Catiline. Catiline, now
in middle life, had when young been a fervent admirer of Sylla, and, as
has been already said, had been an active agent in the proscription. He
had murdered his brother-in-law, and perhaps his brother, under political
pretences. In an age when licentiousness of the grossest kind was too
common to attract attention, Catiline had achieved a notoriety for infamy.
Ho had intrigued with a Vestal virgin, the sister of Cicero's wife,
Terentia. If Cicero is to be believed, he had made away with his own wife,
that he might marry Aurelia Orestilla, a woman as wicked as she was
beautiful, and he had killed his child also because Aurelia had objected
to be encumbered with a step-son. But this, too, was common in high
society in those days. Adultery and incest had become familiar
excitements.
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