had conspired with
a number of others, many of them young men of high birth but dissipated
character, to seize the chief offices of the state, and to extricate
themselves from the pecuniary and other difficulties that had resulted
from their excesses, by the wholesale plunder of the city. The plot was
unmasked by the vigilance of Cicero, five of the traitors were summarily
executed, and in the overthrow of the army that had been gathered in
their support Catiline himself perished. Cicero regarded himself as the
savior of his country, and his country for the moment seemed to give
grateful assent.

But reverses were at hand. During the existence of the political
combination of Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus, known as the first
triumvirate, P. Clodius, an enemy of Cicero's, proposed a law banishing
"any one who had put Roman citizens to death without trial." This was
aimed at Cicero on account of his share in the Catiline affair, and in
March, 58 B. C., he left Rome. The same day a law was passed by which
he was banished by name, and his property was plundered and destroyed,
a temple to Liberty being erected on the site of his house in the city.
During his exile Cicero's manliness to some extent deserted him. He
drifted from place to place, seeking the protection of officials against
assassination, writing letters urging his supporters to agitate for
his recall, sometimes accusing them of lukewarmness and even treachery,
bemoaning the ingratitude of his' country or regretting the course
of action that had led to his outlawry, and suffering from extreme
depression over his separation from his wife and children and the wreck
of his political ambitions. Finally in August, 57 B. C., the decree
for his restoration was passed, and he returned to Rome the next month,
being received with immense popular enthusiasm. During the next few
years the renewal of the understanding among the triumvirs shut Cicero
out from any leading part in politics, and he resumed his activity in
the law-courts, his most important case being, perhaps, the defence of
Milo for the murder of Clodius, Cicero's most troublesome enemy. This
oration, in the revised form in which it has come down to us, is ranked
as among the finest specimens of the art of the orator, though in its
original form it failed to secure Milo's acquittal. Meantime, Cicero was
also devoting much time to literary composition, and his letters show
great dejection over the political situati