"If it were so, I should not despair of Rome—my heart would not throb, as it now does, nor my voice tremble with anxiety.
"Cisalpine Gaul is tranquil as the vale of Arno! No bow is bended in the Teutonic forests, unless against the elk or urus! The legions have not turned their backs before the scymetars of Pontus! The salt sown in the market-place of Carthage hath borne no crop, but desolation. The one-eyed conqueror is nerveless in the silent grave!
"But were all these, now peaceful, subjugated, lifeless, were all these, I say, in arms, victorious, present, upon this soil of Italy, around these walls of Rome, I should doubt nothing, fear nothing, expect nothing, but present strife, and future victory!
"There is—there is, that spark of valor, that clear light of Roman virtue, alive in every heart; yea! even of our maids and matrons, that they would brook no hostile step even upon the threshold of our empire!
"What then do I foresee? what fear? Massacre—[pg 242]parricide—conflagration—treason! Treason in Rome itself—in the Forum—in the Campus—here! Here in this holiest and safest spot! Here in the shrine of that great God, who, ages since, when this vast Rome was but a mud-built hamlet, that golden capitol, a straw-thatched shed, rolled back the tide of war, and stablished here, here, where my foot is fixed, the immortal seat of empire!
"Even now as I turn my eyes around me they fall abhorrent on the faces, they read indignant the designs, of their country's parricides!
"Aye! Conscript Fathers, prætorians, patricians of the great old houses, I see them in their places here; ready to vote immediately on their own monstrous schemes! I see them here, adulterers, forgers of wills, assassins, spendthrifts, poisoners, defilers of vestal virgins, contemners of the Gods, parricides of the Republic! I see them, with daggers sharpened against all true Romans, lurking beneath their fringed and perfumed tunics! Misled by strange ambition, maddened with lust, drunk with despairing guilt, athirst for the blood of citizens!
"I see them! you all see them! Will you await in coward apathy, until they shake you from your lethargy—until the outcries of your murdered children, of your ravished wives arouse you, until you awake from your sleep and find Rome in ashes?
"You hear me—you gaze on me in wonder, you ask me with your eyes what it is that I mean I who are the traitors? Lend me your ears then, and fix well your minds, lest they shrink in disgust and wonder. Lend me your ears only, and I fear not that you will determine, worthily of yourselves, and of the Republic!
"You all well know that on the 16th day before the calends of November, which should have been the eve of the consular Elections, I promised that I would soon lay before you ample proofs of the plot, which then I foretold to you but darkly.