He made no excuses. He admitted the truth of what had been reported
of him. The State, he said, had two bodies, one weak (the aristocracy),
with a weak leader (Cicero); the other, the great mass of the citizens--
strong in themselves, but without a head, and he himself intended to be
that head.[11] A groan was heard in the house, but less loud than in
Cicero's opinion it ought to have been; and Catiline sailed out in
triumph, leaving the noble lords looking in each other's faces.
[Sidenote: October, B.C. 63.]
Both Cicero and the Senate were evidently in the greatest alarm that
Catiline would succeed constitutionally in being chosen consul, and they
strained every sinew to prevent so terrible a catastrophe. When the
Comitia came on, Cicero admits that he occupied the voting place in the
Campus Martius with a guard of men who could be depended on. He was
violating the law, which forbade the presence of an armed force on those
occasions. He excused himself by pretending that Catiline's party intended
violence, and he appeared ostentatiously in a breastplate as if his own
life was aimed at. The result was that Catiline failed once more, and was
rejected by a small majority. Cicero attributes his defeat to the moral
effect produced by the breastplate. But from the time of the Gracchi
downwards the aristocracy had not hesitated to lay pressure on the
elections when they could safely do it; and the story must be taken with
reservation, in the absence of a more impartial account than we possess of
the purpose to which Cicero's guard was applied.
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