and political power against which Sulla would have found it hard to contend. But what chance was there of a similar respite for Catiline? Mithridates was already driven from Asia and Pompey was ready to set sail immediately. A massacre in Rome would have brought the Nobles thronging to his camp; he would have returned with his veteran army; his name would have rallied all Italy to his standard, and the hasty levies of the insurgents, led by men not one of whom had ever commanded an army in the field, would have been swept like chaff before him.[1] The difference between Cæsar and Catiline reminds one of the choice placed before the peasant of the Scottish legend, who found himself in the presence of a magic sword and horn, and whose fate was to depend on whether he first drew the sword or first blew the horn. Cæsar avoided the challenge to Pompey until he had provided himself with a weapon. The fate of Catiline, even had his first effort succeeded, would have been that of the peasant in the tale, who was torn in pieces by the spirits whom his blast evoked—
"Woe to the fool that ever he was born,
That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn."
It is obvious that Crassus, however willing he may have been to use Catiline as a tool in his designs against his rival Pompey, can have had no sympathy with his schemes of national bankruptcy, and we
- ↑ Their plan for holding Pompey in check was in keeping with the folly of the whole movement; they dreamed of pouncing on Pompey's children and having them for hostages.—See Plutarch, Cic., 18, 1.
