[25] Cease to weep, Aurunculeia: Thou need’st not fear that any lovelier maid should see the bright day coming from Ocean.
Even so the hyacinth is wont to bloom in the rich man’s many-coloured garden. But thou lingerest. The day is passing. Come forth, thou bride.
Come forth, thou bride, now if it please thee, and hear our songs. Look how the torches shake their golden hair! Come forth, thou bride.
[26] Plate 15.
[27] At last, Fellow Citizens of Rome, at last we are quit of Lucius Catiline. Mad with audacity, panting with iniquity, infamously contriving destruction for the fatherland, hurling his threats of fire and slaughter against us and our city, we have cast him forth or driven him forth or escorted him forth on his way with salutations. Gone, vanished, absconded, escaped! No more shall disaster be plotted against our bulwarks from within by that monster, that prodigy of wickedness. No more shall that dagger threaten our hearts. No more in the Campus, nor in the forum, nor in the senate-house, no more within the walls of our own homes, shall he fill us with panic and alarm.
[28] I was grieved, Fathers and Senators, grieved that the republic once saved by your exertions and mine should be doomed so shortly to perish.... Listen, listen, Fathers and Senators, listen and learn the wounds of our fatherland!
[29] As a youth I defended the state; I will not fail her in my age: I spurned the swords of Catiline; I will not tremble at thine. Nay, sirs, I would gladly give my body to death, if that could assure the liberty of our country and help the pains o£ the Roman people to bring the fruit of its long travailing to birth. Why, nearly twenty years ago in this very temple I declared that death could not come too soon for a man who had enjoyed a consulship. With how much more truth shall I declare it in my age! To me death is already covetable; I have finished with those rewards which I have gained and those honours which I have achieved. Only these two prayers I make: one, that at my death I may leave the Roman people free (than this nothing greater could be granted by the immortal gods), and, secondly, that every man may so be requited as he may deserve at the hands of the republic!
[30] Plate 44, Fig. 2.
[31] Plate 16.
[32] See page 18.