spected of being engaged. The consuls had been armed with
extra-constitutional powers, conveyed by special resolution of the Senate
in the comprehensive formula that they "were to look to it that the state
suffered no damage". Still, without going so far as to call this
unexampled proceeding, as the German critic Mommsen does, "an act of the
most brutal tyranny", it is easy to understand how Mr. Forsyth, bringing
a calm and dispassionate legal judgment to bear upon the case, finds it
impossible to reconcile it with our ideas of dignified and even-handed
justice.[2] It was the hasty instinct of self-preservation, the act of
a weak government uncertain of its very friends, under the influence of
terror--a terror for which, no doubt, there were abundant grounds. When
Cicero stood on the prison steps, where he had waited to receive the
report of those who were making sure work with the prisoners within, and
announced their fate to the assembled crowd below in the single word
"_Vixerunt_" (a euphemism which we can only weakly translate into
"They have lived their life"), no doubt he felt that he and the republic
held theirs from that moment by a firmer tenure; no doubt very many of
those who heard him felt that they could breathe again, now that the
grasp of Catiline's assassins was, for the moment at all events, off
their throats; and the crowd who followed the consul home were sincere
enough when they hailed such a vigorous avenger as the 'Father of his
Country'. But none the less it was that which politicians have called
worse than a crime--it was a political blunder; and Cicero came to find
it so in after years; though--partly from his immense self-appreciation,
and partly from an honest determination to stand by his act and deed in
all its consequences--he never suffered the shadow of such a confession
to appear in his most intimate correspondence. He claimed for himself
ever afterwards the sole glory of having saved the state by such
prompt and decided action; and in this he was fully borne out by the
facts: justifiable or unjustifiable, the act was his; and there were
burning hearts at Rome which dared not speak out against the popular
consul, but set it down to his sole account against the day of
retribution.

[Footnote 1: A state dungeon, said to have been built in the reign of
Servius Tullius. It was twelve feet under ground. Executions often took
place there, and the bodies of the criminals were afterwards thrown d