25.
In every case, O judges, which is of more serious importance than usual, we must judge a
good deal as to what every one has wished, or intended, or done, not from the counts of the
indictment but from the habits of the person who is accused. For no one of us can have his
character modeled in a moment, nor can any one's course of life be altered, or his natural
disposition changed on a sudden.
[70]
Survey for a moment in
your mind's eye, O judges, (to say nothing of other instances,) these very men who were
implicated in this wickedness. Catiline conspired against the republic. Whose ears were ever
unwilling to believe in this attempt on the part of a man who had spent his whole life, from
his boyhood upwards, not only in intemperance and debauchery, but who had devoted all his
energies and all his zeal to every sort of enormity, and lust, and bloodshed? Who marveled
that that man died fighting against his country, whom all men had always thought born for
civil war? Who is there that recollects the way in which Lentulus was a partner it of
informers or the insanity of his caprices or his perverse and impious superstition, who can
wonder that he cherished either wicked designs, or insane hopes? Who even thinks of Caius
Cethegus and his expedition into Spain and the wound inflicted on Quintus Metellus Pius
without seeing that a prison was built on purpose to be the scene of his punishment?
[71]
I say nothing of the rest that there may be some end to my
instances. I only ask you silently to recollect all those men who are proved to have been in
this conspiracy. You will see that every one of those men was convicted by his own manner of
life, before be was condemned by our suspicion. And as for Autronius himself, (since his name
is the most nearly connected with the danger in which my client is, and with the accusation
which is brought against him,) did not the manner in which he had spent all his early life
convict him? He had always been audacious, violent profligate. We know that in defending
himself in charges of adultery, he was accustomed to use not only the most infamous language,
but even his fists and his feet. We know that he had been accustomed to drive men from their
estates, to murder his neighbors, to plunder the temples of the allies, to disturb the courts
of justice by violence and arms; in prosperity to despise every body, in adversity to fight
against all good men; never to regard the interests of the republic, and not to yield even to
fortune herself. Even if he were not convicted by the most irresistible evidence, still his
own habits and his past life would convict him.
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