18.
[50]
But now what promotion of yours am I opposing? or what dignity of yours am I throwing
obstacles in the way of? what is there which you can at present seek from this proceeding?
Honour has been conferred on your father; the insignia of honour have descended to you. You,
adorned with his spoils, come to tear the body of him whom you have slain; I am defending and
protecting him who is lying prostrate and stripped of his arms. And on this you find fault
with me, and are angry because I defend him. But I not only am not angry with you, but I do
not even find fault with your proceeding. For I imagine that you have laid down a rule for
yourself as to what you thought that you ought to do, and that you have appointed a very
capable judge of your duty.
[51]
“Oh, but the son of
Caius Cornelius accuses him, and that ought to have the same weight as if his father had given
information against him.” O wise Cornelius,—the father; I
mean—who left all the reward which is usually given for information, but has got all
the discredit which a confession can involve, through the accusation brought by his son!
However; what is it that Cornelius gives information of by the mouth of that boy? If it is a
part of the business which is unknown to me, but which has been communicated to Hortensius,
let Hortensius reply. If as you say, his statement concerns that crew of Autronius and
Catiline, when they intended to commit a massacre in the Campus Martius, at the consular
comitia, which were held by me; we saw Autronius that day in the
Campus. And why do I say we saw? I myself saw him (for you at that time, O judges, had no
anxiety, no suspicions; I, protected by a firm guard of friends at that time, checked the
forces and the endeavours of Catiline and Autronius).
[52]
Is
there, then, any one who says that Sulla at that time had any idea of coming into the Campus?
And yet, if at that time he had united himself with Catiline in that society of wickedness,
why did he leave him? why was not he with Autronius? why, when their cases were similar, are
not similar proofs of criminality found? But since Cornelius himself even now hesitates about
giving information against him, he, as you say, contents himself with filling up the outline
of his son's information what then does he say about that night, when, according to the orders
of Catiline, he came into the Scythemakers' 1 street, to the house of Marcus Lecca, that night which followed the sixth of
November; in my consulship? that night which of all the moments of the conspiracy was the most
terrible and the most miserable. Then the day in which Catiline should leave the city, then
the terms on which the rest should remain behind, then the arrangement and division of the
whole city, with regard to the conflagration and the massacre, was settled. Then your father,
O Cornelius, as he afterwards confessed, begged for himself that especial employment of going
the first in the morning to salute me as consul, in order that, laving been admitted,
according to my usual custom and to the privilege which his friendship with me gave him, he
might slay me in my bed.
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