ed, only to leave behind a taste for blood and licence amongst
the corrupt aristocracy and turbulent commons. There were men amongst
the younger nobles quite ready to risk their lives in the struggle for
absolute power; and the mob was ready to follow whatever leader was bold
enough to bid highest for their support.

It is impossible here to do much more than glance at the well-known story
of Catiline's conspiracy. It was the attempt of an able and desperate man
to make himself and his partisans masters of Rome by a bloody revolution.
Catiline was a member of a noble but impoverished family, who had borne
arms under Sylla, and had served an early apprenticeship in bloodshed
under that unscrupulous leader. Cicero has described his character in
terms which probably are not unfair, because the portrait was drawn by
him, in the course of his defence of a young friend who had been too much
connected with Catiline, for the distinct purpose of showing the popular
qualities which had dazzled and attracted so many of the youth of Rome.

"He had about him very many of, I can hardly say the visible tokens, but
the adumbrations of the highest qualities. There was in his character
that which tempted him to indulge the worst passions, but also that which
spurred him to energy and hard work. Licentious appetites burnt fiercely
within him, but there was also a strong love of active military service.
I believe that there never lived on earth such a monster of
inconsistency,--such a compound of opposite tastes and passions brought
into conflict with each other. Who at one time was a greater favourite
with our most illustrious men? Who was a closer intimate with our very
basest? Who could be more greedy of money than he was? Who could lavish it
more profusely? There were these marvellous qualities in the man,--he made
friends so universally, he retained them by his obliging ways, he was
ready to share what he had with them all, to help them at their need with
his money, his influence, his personal exertions--not stopping short of
the most audacious crime, if there was need of it. He could change his
very nature, and rule himself by circumstances, and turn and bend in any
direction. He lived soberly with the serious, he was a boon companion with
the gay; grave with the elders, merry with the young; reckless among the
desperate, profligate with the depraved. With a nature so complex
and many-sided, he not only collected round him wicked and