State. The Senate replied by declaring Catiline and Manlius enemies, and summoning those who had followed them to disperse. Rewards had already been offered for the denunciation of their confederates within the city. Sallust tells us[1] that these decrees produced no effect. None of the conspirators in the capital came forward to give evidence, and none of those in the field deserted their standard. Catiline's force now amounted to ten thousand men. He felt himself strong enough to refuse the aid of the runaway slaves who would gladly have flocked to him. He feared that their presence might alarm those who looked with indifference or with favour on his movement, and so spoil his chance of support from the populace of the capital.
While the forces were thus mustering on either side, Cicero was annoyed by a foolish and ill-timed contest among his own followers. At the recent consular election Silanus and Murena had headed the poll with Servius Sulpicius Rufus for third and Catiline for fourth. A law had been lately passed increasing the penalties against bribery, and Cato, the sworn foe of electoral corruption, whose characteristic it was to be instant in season and out of season, must needs choose this moment, when all the fortunes of the commonwealth were at stake, to divide the friends of the constitution by trying to unseat Murena on a charge of bribery and treating.
Cicero protested against the folly of throwing the city again into the confusion of a contested election;
- ↑ Sallust, Cat., 36, 5.
