But there are men, O Romans, who say that Catiline has been driven by me into banishment. But if I could do so by a word, I would drive out those also who say so. Forsooth, that timid, that excessively bashful man could not bear the voice of the consul; as soon as he was ordered to go into banishment, he obeyed, he was quiet. Yesterday, when I had been all but murdered at my own house, I convoked the senate in the temple of Jupiter Stator; I related the whole affair to the conscript fathers; and when Catiline came thither, what senator addressed him? who saluted him? who looked upon him not so much even as an abandoned citizen, as an implacable enemy? Nay the chiefs of that body left that part of the benches to which he came naked and empty.
[13] On this I, that violent consul, who drive citizens into exile by a word, asked of Catiline whether he had been at the nocturnal meeting at Marcus Lecca's, or not; when that most audacious man, convicted by his own conscience, was at first silent. I related all the other circumstances; I described what he had done that night, where he had been, what he had arranged for the next night, how the plan of the whole war had been laid down by him. When he hesitated, when he was convicted, I asked why he hesitated to go whither he had been long been preparing to go; when I knew that arms, that the axes, the fasces, and trumpets, and military standards, and that silver eagle to which he had made a shrine in his own house, had been sent on? [14] Did I drive him into exile who I knew had already entered upon war? I suppose Manlius, that centurion who has pitched his camp in the Faesulan district, has proclaimed war against the Roman people in his own name; and that camp is not now waiting for Catiline as its general, and he, driven indeed into exile, will go to Marseilles, as they say, and not to that camp.
