CATO'S SPEECH
Cato is another interesting demagogue and, as you will see, it’s hard to tell – between him and Cicero – which of the two was the most insane. He was five years younger than Caesar and his parents died when he was very young. His great-grandfather was Cato the Elder. He was raised by his maternal uncle, Marcus Livius Drusus who was murdered when Cato was four.
There are a number of stories about Cato as a child. Cato's stubbornness began in his early years. Sarpedon, his pedagogue, reports a very obedient and questioning child, although slow in being persuaded of things and sometimes very difficult to retrain. A story told by Plutarch tells of Quintus Poppaedius Silo, leader of the Marsi and involved in a highly controversial business in the Roman Forum, who made a visit to his friend Marcus Livius and met the children of the house. In a playful mood, he asked the children's support for his cause. All of them nodded and smiled except Cato, who stared at the guest with most suspicious looks. Silo demanded an answer from him and, seeing no response, took Cato and hung him by the feet out of the window. Even then, Cato would not say anything.
Plutarch recounts a few other stories as well. One night, as some children were playing a game in a side room of a house during a social event, they were having a mock trial with judges and accusers as well as a defendant. One of the children, supposedly a good-natured and pleasant child, was convicted by the mock accusers and was being carried out of the room when he cried out desperately for Cato. Cato became very angry at the other children and, saying nothing, grabbed the child away from the "guards" and carried him away from the others.
Plutarch also tells a story about Cato's peers' immense respect for him, even at a young age, during the Roman ritual military game, called "Troy", in which all aristocratic teenagers participated as a sort of "coming of age" ceremony, involving a mock battle with wooden weapons performed on horseback. While the child of one of Sulla's surrogates was chosen by the adult organizers to lead one of the "teams", the team refused to follow him because of his character, and when they were finally asked whom they would follow, the boys unanimously chose Cato.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Roman dictator, liked to talk with Cato and his brother Caepio, and often requested the child's presence even when the boy openly defied his opinions and policies in public (Sulla's daughter Cornelia Sulla was married to their uncle Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus). According to Plutarch, at one point during the height of the civil strife, as respected Roman nobles were being led to execution from Sulla's villa, Cato, aged about 14, asked his tutor why no one had yet killed the dictator. Sarpedon's answer was thus: "They fear him, my child, more than they hate him." Cato replied to this, "Give me a sword, that I might free my country from slavery." After this, Sarpedon was careful not to leave the boy unattended around the capital, seeing how firm he was in his republican beliefs.
After receiving his inheritance, Cato moved from his uncle's house and began to study Stoic philosophy and politics. He began to live in a very modest way, as his great-grandfather Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder had famously done. Cato ostentatiously subjected himself to violent exercise, and learned to endure cold and rain with a minimum of clothes. He ate only what was necessary and drank the cheapest wine on the market. This was allegedly entirely for philosophical reasons; his inheritance would have permitted him to live comfortably. It seems obvious to anyone who really knows Stoicism that Cato was whitewashing the outside of the tomb, so to say. He remained in private life for a long time, rarely seen in public. But when he did appear in the forum, his speeches and rhetorical skills were most admired.
Cato was first engaged to Aemilia Lepida, a patrician woman, but she was married instead to Quintus Caecilius Metellus Scipio. Incensed, Cato threatened to sue for her hand, but his friends mollified him, and Cato was contented to compose Archilochian iambics against Scipio in consolation. Later, Cato was married to a woman called Atilia. By her, he had a son, Marcus Porcius Cato, and a daughter, Porcia, who would become the second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus. Cato later divorced Atilia for unseemly behavior.
As a military tribune, Cato was sent to Macedon in 67 BC at the age of 28 and given command of a legion. He led his men from the front, sharing their work, food, and sleeping quarters. He was strict in discipline and punishment but was nonetheless loved by his legionaries. While Cato was in service in Macedon, he received the news that his beloved brother Caepio (from whom he was nearly inseparable) was dying in Thrace. He immediately set off to see him but was unable to see his brother before he died. Cato was overwhelmed by grief and, for once in his life, he spared no expense to organize lavish funeral ceremonies for his brother (as Caepio had wished).
At the end of his military commission in Macedon, Cato went on a private journey through the Roman provinces of the Middle East.
On his return to Rome in 65 BC, Cato was elected quaestor. Like everything else in his life, Cato took unusual care to study the background necessary for the post, especially the laws relating to taxes. One of his first moves was to prosecute former quaestors for illegal appropriation of funds and dishonesty. Cato also prosecuted Sulla's informers, who had acted as head-hunters during Sulla's dictatorship, despite their political connections among Cato's own party and despite the power of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who had been known as the "teenage butcher" for his service under Sulla. The informers of Sulla were accused first of illegal appropriation of treasury money, and then of homicide. At the end of the year, Cato stepped down from his quaestorship amid popular acclaim, and he never ceased to keep an eye on the treasury, always looking for irregularities.
As senator, Cato was scrupulous and determined. He never missed a session of the Senate and publicly criticized ones who did so. From the beginning, he aligned himself with the Optimates, the conservative faction of the Senate. Many of the optimates at this time had been personal friends of Sulla, whom Cato had despised since his youth, yet Cato attempted to make his name by returning his faction to its pure republican roots.
In 63 BC, he was elected tribune of the plebs for the following year, and this is where we find him during the Catiline conspiracy.
After divorcing Atilia, Cato married Marcia, daughter of Lucius Marcius Philippus, who bore him two or three children. While Cato was married to Marcia, the renowned orator Q Hortensius Hortalus, who was Cato's admirer and friend, desired a connection to Cato's family and asked for the hand of Porcia, Cato's eldest daughter. Cato refused because the potential match made little sense: Porcia was already married to Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, who was unwilling to let her go; and Hortensius, being nearly 60 years old, was almost 30 years senior to Porcia. Denied the hand of Porcia, Hortensius then suggested that he marry Cato's wife Marcia, on the grounds that she had already given Cato heirs. On the condition that Marcia's father consented to the match, Cato agreed to divorce Marcia, who then married Hortensius. Between Hortensius' death in 50 BC and Cato's leaving Italy with Pompey in 49 BC, Cato took Marcia and her children into his household again. Ancient sources differ on whether they were remarried. He committed suicide in April 46 BC. Plutarch wrote:
On hearing of his death in Utica, Plutarch wrote that Caesar commented: "Cato, I grudge you your death, as you would have grudged me the preservation of your life."
Okay, so we know that we are dealing with a guy who had a tenuous grasp on reality at best, and severe psychological problems at worst. So now, let’s look at Cato’s speech which was, apparently, recorded by Cicero’s stenographers and preserved by Sallust, and the strange drama that played out at the end of this debate. Thankfully, just as he was stingy in every other way, Cato was sparing in speech (relatively speaking).
Cato is not so much interested in voting on the fate of the prisoners as he is in imposing an old-time oligarchy-controlled totalitarian regime on the state far beyond anything that Sulla achieved, all under the guiding hand of the optimates, of course.
The optimates are the “good men” who need to help with the imposition of totalitarianism so as to be able to keep their mansions, villas, slaves, pleasures, and so on. In the next paragraph, when he speaks of the “luxury and avarice of our citizens”, he means everybody BUT the optimates. (And Cato, of course, who was the world’s biggest hypocrite.)
The “enemy” is, of course, other citizens of Rome other than the optimates.
Notice how he rails against what he calls “lavishing the property of others” as being falsely labeled as “generous”. This “property of others” that concerns him is the vast, obscene wealth in land and goods stolen by the optimates from other nations, from their own yeoman citizenry by greedy cunning and immoral tactics, not to mention the millions upon millions of human beings enslaved by them to support their lavish lifestyle. The “audacity in wickedness” is certainly a reference to the many rebels and reformers who sought to gain or regain rights for the other 99% of the humans occupying the empire who were kept under the heel of the optimates.
The next passage is rather famous because, in it, Cato suggested slyly that Cæsar was in some manner allied with the conspirators. He reveals almost at the beginning that what is agitating him is Caesar’s remark about death that has been interpreted as Epicurean. Cato claimed to be a Stoic, but as I’ve already demonstrated, he was certainly not a Stoic in Greek terms while Caesar was more Stoic in his behaviors than the highly emotional and volatile Cato.
Cato is playing a wily game here. It is clear from his opening that he didn’t really believe in Cicero’s conspiracy theory; he wasn’t concerned to punish the alleged conspirators nor was he much concerned at all with the conspiracy itself. He was just using the occasion to hammer on his theme of a particular type of “liberty”. Cato wasn’t really interested in liberty for the masses, but only a full and complete liberty for the optimates. He was very concerned about the possible rise of any dictator who might infringe on the liberties of that august group of individuals. He advocated placing all kinds of restrictions on official posts so that no one could use a position to consolidate power in any way. That is certainly a noble idea, right? The problem is, as noted, Cato’s context: that the only ones who really deserved freedom and rights were the optimates themselves and he failed to see that this body, itself, was equivalent to a despot over all other people. For Cato, “citizens” were only people of wealth and “old families.” As the great grandson of a yeoman farmer, he was like any convert: he had become more catholic than the pope.
In the next paragraph, Cato finally gives acknowledgement to Cicero’s conspiracy theory though his rhetoric is a rather different style from Cicero’s. He avoids hyperbole, but acknowledges a very real danger and it is to be supposed that, being known (having worked to make himself known) for his more generally Spartan habits and ostentatious virtue, these words carried weight with the rational, undecided members of the senate.
Cato next lets us know what he means by not being slothful and indolent, really; it is being a physical and psychological tyrant who cares more for the letter than the spirit of the law.
It is interesting that Cato suggests sparing the dignity of Lentulus, but not Lentulus’ body and pardoning Cathegus.
His next words contradict the previous claims of Cicero in his second oration, that once Catiline was ejected from the city, all were safe. In fact, the third oration of Cicero contradicts his second one since there were additional alleged plotters that were captured by means of his spy system. Cato now says that there are “dangers on all sides” and certainly he means all citizens and inhabitants of Rome that are unhappy living under the cruel domination of a ruling elite.
Cato, like Caesar, brought in historical examples and tradition to support his views. This is standard procedure when arguing opposite points of view: to claim that history or long-established customs are behind yours. Despite the long and tedious oration by Cicero, Sallust saw the battle as being between Caesar and Cato and this was, apparently, the common view as Brutus’ later account of this debate minimized the role of Cicero (which made Cicero highly irate as is revealed in his letters). Cato was clearly conscious, after he spoke, that he had swayed many senators to his side (which was only accidentally Cicero’s side as well), but Caesar wasn’t ready to give up yet.
Sallust doesn’t record the actual exchange between the two, but apparently, it was rather heated on Cato’s part (not very Stoic) while Caesar argued calmly and rationally (very Stoic). Cato was freely insulting Caesar in an ad hominem manner and Caesar was turning aside the insults. In the midst of this, a note was brought to Caesar and Cato jumped on this with full paranoid stupidity. Declaring that it was obviously a message from conspirators against the government, he demanded that Caesar read it aloud. Caesar refused and Cato led the raising of shouts and accusations against Caesar so the latter finally handed the former the missive in question. Cato read it quickly and was horrified and humiliated to realize that it was nothing but a passionate love note to Caesar… from Cato’s own sister, Servilia. In a very un-Stoic-like manner, Cato shouted in anger “Have it back, you drunk!” and threw the letter in Caesar’s face. Caesar, in a very Stoic like way, had not been even slightly ruffled by this over-heated display of the emotions of hate, vengeance and envy. What made the situation even more remarkable was the fact that Caesar was well known for his avoidance of alcohol while Cato, the alleged Stoic, was a heavy drinker, even an alcoholic!
It is probable that Cato convinced himself that Caesar had deliberately set up this episode for the express purpose of humiliating him. He was a man who took himself very, very seriously and expected everyone else to do so as well. In any event, his hatred of Caesar intensified to the point that, for the rest of his life, he was barely able to control his mad-dog behavior whenever Caesar’s name was mentioned, much less when Caesar was present. Yeah, a real Stoic, I'm sure.
Nevertheless, “portents” of the beginning of Cicero’s comedown began almost immediately at this session. One of his informers who was a man expelled from the senate during the consulship of Crassus and Pompey, made the accusation that Crassus had entrusted him with a message of encouragement for Catilina. To Cicero’s great astonishment, the same senators who had been swept up in ecstasy, praising him and thanking him just the day before, shouted him down. Apparently, there were some lines that could not be crossed and criticizing Crassus was one of them.
Catulus and Piso, the corrupt and the evil, wanted Cicero to denounce Caesar. But he declined. (Again, one wonders about that meeting after the receipt of the letters and why Caesar and Crassus both were so strangely quiet throughout what must have been very trying proceedings when they must have wanted to protest and argue.)
Cato is another interesting demagogue and, as you will see, it’s hard to tell – between him and Cicero – which of the two was the most insane. He was five years younger than Caesar and his parents died when he was very young. His great-grandfather was Cato the Elder. He was raised by his maternal uncle, Marcus Livius Drusus who was murdered when Cato was four.
There are a number of stories about Cato as a child. Cato's stubbornness began in his early years. Sarpedon, his pedagogue, reports a very obedient and questioning child, although slow in being persuaded of things and sometimes very difficult to retrain. A story told by Plutarch tells of Quintus Poppaedius Silo, leader of the Marsi and involved in a highly controversial business in the Roman Forum, who made a visit to his friend Marcus Livius and met the children of the house. In a playful mood, he asked the children's support for his cause. All of them nodded and smiled except Cato, who stared at the guest with most suspicious looks. Silo demanded an answer from him and, seeing no response, took Cato and hung him by the feet out of the window. Even then, Cato would not say anything.
Plutarch recounts a few other stories as well. One night, as some children were playing a game in a side room of a house during a social event, they were having a mock trial with judges and accusers as well as a defendant. One of the children, supposedly a good-natured and pleasant child, was convicted by the mock accusers and was being carried out of the room when he cried out desperately for Cato. Cato became very angry at the other children and, saying nothing, grabbed the child away from the "guards" and carried him away from the others.
Plutarch also tells a story about Cato's peers' immense respect for him, even at a young age, during the Roman ritual military game, called "Troy", in which all aristocratic teenagers participated as a sort of "coming of age" ceremony, involving a mock battle with wooden weapons performed on horseback. While the child of one of Sulla's surrogates was chosen by the adult organizers to lead one of the "teams", the team refused to follow him because of his character, and when they were finally asked whom they would follow, the boys unanimously chose Cato.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Roman dictator, liked to talk with Cato and his brother Caepio, and often requested the child's presence even when the boy openly defied his opinions and policies in public (Sulla's daughter Cornelia Sulla was married to their uncle Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus). According to Plutarch, at one point during the height of the civil strife, as respected Roman nobles were being led to execution from Sulla's villa, Cato, aged about 14, asked his tutor why no one had yet killed the dictator. Sarpedon's answer was thus: "They fear him, my child, more than they hate him." Cato replied to this, "Give me a sword, that I might free my country from slavery." After this, Sarpedon was careful not to leave the boy unattended around the capital, seeing how firm he was in his republican beliefs.
After receiving his inheritance, Cato moved from his uncle's house and began to study Stoic philosophy and politics. He began to live in a very modest way, as his great-grandfather Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder had famously done. Cato ostentatiously subjected himself to violent exercise, and learned to endure cold and rain with a minimum of clothes. He ate only what was necessary and drank the cheapest wine on the market. This was allegedly entirely for philosophical reasons; his inheritance would have permitted him to live comfortably. It seems obvious to anyone who really knows Stoicism that Cato was whitewashing the outside of the tomb, so to say. He remained in private life for a long time, rarely seen in public. But when he did appear in the forum, his speeches and rhetorical skills were most admired.
Cato was first engaged to Aemilia Lepida, a patrician woman, but she was married instead to Quintus Caecilius Metellus Scipio. Incensed, Cato threatened to sue for her hand, but his friends mollified him, and Cato was contented to compose Archilochian iambics against Scipio in consolation. Later, Cato was married to a woman called Atilia. By her, he had a son, Marcus Porcius Cato, and a daughter, Porcia, who would become the second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus. Cato later divorced Atilia for unseemly behavior.
As a military tribune, Cato was sent to Macedon in 67 BC at the age of 28 and given command of a legion. He led his men from the front, sharing their work, food, and sleeping quarters. He was strict in discipline and punishment but was nonetheless loved by his legionaries. While Cato was in service in Macedon, he received the news that his beloved brother Caepio (from whom he was nearly inseparable) was dying in Thrace. He immediately set off to see him but was unable to see his brother before he died. Cato was overwhelmed by grief and, for once in his life, he spared no expense to organize lavish funeral ceremonies for his brother (as Caepio had wished).
At the end of his military commission in Macedon, Cato went on a private journey through the Roman provinces of the Middle East.
On his return to Rome in 65 BC, Cato was elected quaestor. Like everything else in his life, Cato took unusual care to study the background necessary for the post, especially the laws relating to taxes. One of his first moves was to prosecute former quaestors for illegal appropriation of funds and dishonesty. Cato also prosecuted Sulla's informers, who had acted as head-hunters during Sulla's dictatorship, despite their political connections among Cato's own party and despite the power of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who had been known as the "teenage butcher" for his service under Sulla. The informers of Sulla were accused first of illegal appropriation of treasury money, and then of homicide. At the end of the year, Cato stepped down from his quaestorship amid popular acclaim, and he never ceased to keep an eye on the treasury, always looking for irregularities.
As senator, Cato was scrupulous and determined. He never missed a session of the Senate and publicly criticized ones who did so. From the beginning, he aligned himself with the Optimates, the conservative faction of the Senate. Many of the optimates at this time had been personal friends of Sulla, whom Cato had despised since his youth, yet Cato attempted to make his name by returning his faction to its pure republican roots.
In 63 BC, he was elected tribune of the plebs for the following year, and this is where we find him during the Catiline conspiracy.
After divorcing Atilia, Cato married Marcia, daughter of Lucius Marcius Philippus, who bore him two or three children. While Cato was married to Marcia, the renowned orator Q Hortensius Hortalus, who was Cato's admirer and friend, desired a connection to Cato's family and asked for the hand of Porcia, Cato's eldest daughter. Cato refused because the potential match made little sense: Porcia was already married to Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, who was unwilling to let her go; and Hortensius, being nearly 60 years old, was almost 30 years senior to Porcia. Denied the hand of Porcia, Hortensius then suggested that he marry Cato's wife Marcia, on the grounds that she had already given Cato heirs. On the condition that Marcia's father consented to the match, Cato agreed to divorce Marcia, who then married Hortensius. Between Hortensius' death in 50 BC and Cato's leaving Italy with Pompey in 49 BC, Cato took Marcia and her children into his household again. Ancient sources differ on whether they were remarried. He committed suicide in April 46 BC. Plutarch wrote:
On hearing of his death in Utica, Plutarch wrote that Caesar commented: "Cato, I grudge you your death, as you would have grudged me the preservation of your life."
Okay, so we know that we are dealing with a guy who had a tenuous grasp on reality at best, and severe psychological problems at worst. So now, let’s look at Cato’s speech which was, apparently, recorded by Cicero’s stenographers and preserved by Sallust, and the strange drama that played out at the end of this debate. Thankfully, just as he was stingy in every other way, Cato was sparing in speech (relatively speaking).
Cato is not so much interested in voting on the fate of the prisoners as he is in imposing an old-time oligarchy-controlled totalitarian regime on the state far beyond anything that Sulla achieved, all under the guiding hand of the optimates, of course.
The optimates are the “good men” who need to help with the imposition of totalitarianism so as to be able to keep their mansions, villas, slaves, pleasures, and so on. In the next paragraph, when he speaks of the “luxury and avarice of our citizens”, he means everybody BUT the optimates. (And Cato, of course, who was the world’s biggest hypocrite.)
The “enemy” is, of course, other citizens of Rome other than the optimates.
Notice how he rails against what he calls “lavishing the property of others” as being falsely labeled as “generous”. This “property of others” that concerns him is the vast, obscene wealth in land and goods stolen by the optimates from other nations, from their own yeoman citizenry by greedy cunning and immoral tactics, not to mention the millions upon millions of human beings enslaved by them to support their lavish lifestyle. The “audacity in wickedness” is certainly a reference to the many rebels and reformers who sought to gain or regain rights for the other 99% of the humans occupying the empire who were kept under the heel of the optimates.
The next passage is rather famous because, in it, Cato suggested slyly that Cæsar was in some manner allied with the conspirators. He reveals almost at the beginning that what is agitating him is Caesar’s remark about death that has been interpreted as Epicurean. Cato claimed to be a Stoic, but as I’ve already demonstrated, he was certainly not a Stoic in Greek terms while Caesar was more Stoic in his behaviors than the highly emotional and volatile Cato.
Cato is playing a wily game here. It is clear from his opening that he didn’t really believe in Cicero’s conspiracy theory; he wasn’t concerned to punish the alleged conspirators nor was he much concerned at all with the conspiracy itself. He was just using the occasion to hammer on his theme of a particular type of “liberty”. Cato wasn’t really interested in liberty for the masses, but only a full and complete liberty for the optimates. He was very concerned about the possible rise of any dictator who might infringe on the liberties of that august group of individuals. He advocated placing all kinds of restrictions on official posts so that no one could use a position to consolidate power in any way. That is certainly a noble idea, right? The problem is, as noted, Cato’s context: that the only ones who really deserved freedom and rights were the optimates themselves and he failed to see that this body, itself, was equivalent to a despot over all other people. For Cato, “citizens” were only people of wealth and “old families.” As the great grandson of a yeoman farmer, he was like any convert: he had become more catholic than the pope.
Cato wants to make sure that all reformers are massacred along with the execution of the prisoners because they and their kind are the big threat to Rome. His next paragraph is pretty much throw-away, typical of the rants about too much luxury, too much wealth, too much immorality, that served to give him his reputation.
In the next paragraph, Cato finally gives acknowledgement to Cicero’s conspiracy theory though his rhetoric is a rather different style from Cicero’s. He avoids hyperbole, but acknowledges a very real danger and it is to be supposed that, being known (having worked to make himself known) for his more generally Spartan habits and ostentatious virtue, these words carried weight with the rational, undecided members of the senate.
Cato next lets us know what he means by not being slothful and indolent, really; it is being a physical and psychological tyrant who cares more for the letter than the spirit of the law.
It is interesting that Cato suggests sparing the dignity of Lentulus, but not Lentulus’ body and pardoning Cathegus.
His next words contradict the previous claims of Cicero in his second oration, that once Catiline was ejected from the city, all were safe. In fact, the third oration of Cicero contradicts his second one since there were additional alleged plotters that were captured by means of his spy system. Cato now says that there are “dangers on all sides” and certainly he means all citizens and inhabitants of Rome that are unhappy living under the cruel domination of a ruling elite.
Cato, like Caesar, brought in historical examples and tradition to support his views. This is standard procedure when arguing opposite points of view: to claim that history or long-established customs are behind yours. Despite the long and tedious oration by Cicero, Sallust saw the battle as being between Caesar and Cato and this was, apparently, the common view as Brutus’ later account of this debate minimized the role of Cicero (which made Cicero highly irate as is revealed in his letters). Cato was clearly conscious, after he spoke, that he had swayed many senators to his side (which was only accidentally Cicero’s side as well), but Caesar wasn’t ready to give up yet.
Sallust doesn’t record the actual exchange between the two, but apparently, it was rather heated on Cato’s part (not very Stoic) while Caesar argued calmly and rationally (very Stoic). Cato was freely insulting Caesar in an ad hominem manner and Caesar was turning aside the insults. In the midst of this, a note was brought to Caesar and Cato jumped on this with full paranoid stupidity. Declaring that it was obviously a message from conspirators against the government, he demanded that Caesar read it aloud. Caesar refused and Cato led the raising of shouts and accusations against Caesar so the latter finally handed the former the missive in question. Cato read it quickly and was horrified and humiliated to realize that it was nothing but a passionate love note to Caesar… from Cato’s own sister, Servilia. In a very un-Stoic-like manner, Cato shouted in anger “Have it back, you drunk!” and threw the letter in Caesar’s face. Caesar, in a very Stoic like way, had not been even slightly ruffled by this over-heated display of the emotions of hate, vengeance and envy. What made the situation even more remarkable was the fact that Caesar was well known for his avoidance of alcohol while Cato, the alleged Stoic, was a heavy drinker, even an alcoholic!
It is probable that Cato convinced himself that Caesar had deliberately set up this episode for the express purpose of humiliating him. He was a man who took himself very, very seriously and expected everyone else to do so as well. In any event, his hatred of Caesar intensified to the point that, for the rest of his life, he was barely able to control his mad-dog behavior whenever Caesar’s name was mentioned, much less when Caesar was present. Yeah, a real Stoic, I'm sure.
Nevertheless, “portents” of the beginning of Cicero’s comedown began almost immediately at this session. One of his informers who was a man expelled from the senate during the consulship of Crassus and Pompey, made the accusation that Crassus had entrusted him with a message of encouragement for Catilina. To Cicero’s great astonishment, the same senators who had been swept up in ecstasy, praising him and thanking him just the day before, shouted him down. Apparently, there were some lines that could not be crossed and criticizing Crassus was one of them.
Catulus and Piso, the corrupt and the evil, wanted Cicero to denounce Caesar. But he declined. (Again, one wonders about that meeting after the receipt of the letters and why Caesar and Crassus both were so strangely quiet throughout what must have been very trying proceedings when they must have wanted to protest and argue.)
