33/37 With Cicero there is always present the longing to restore the power to the old constitutional possessors of it. So much is admitted, even by his bitter enemies; and I am sometimes at a loss whether to wonder most that a man of letters, dead two thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter or a friend so keenly in earnest about him as I am. Cicero was aware quite as well as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter clearer even than any others, that there was much that was rotten in the State. Men who had been murderers on behalf of Marius, and then others who had murdered on behalf of Sulla--among whom that Catiline, of whom we have to speak presently, had been one--were not apt to settle themselves down as quiet citizens. |