Free Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) by Cicero Page A

defence, along with Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, and Crassus. Cicero’s argument was that whether or not Murena had broken the
lex Tullia
—and he of course argued that he had not—Murena ought to be acquitted because of the threat from Catiline. He and Antonius were due to step down in a month’s time, and it was absolutely necessary that there should be another two consuls ready to take over from them. Moreover, Murena was a military man whereas Sulpicius was a jurist, and in the current emergency it was the soldier who was needed. This argument persuaded the jury and Murena was unanimously acquitted. Afterwards Cicero published his speech,
Pro Murena
, one of his most entertaining and brilliant defences.
    Shortly after the trial was over, Cicero, by an extraordinary stroke of good fortune, was given the chance to acquire the evidence that he needed to prove the guilt of Catiline’s leading associates in the city. The Allobroges, a tribe from Narbonese Gaul who were suffering from exploitation and debt, had sent envoys to Rome to put their case before the senate, but the senate had rejected their appeal. Shortly afterwards, the envoys were approached by a freedman called Publius Umbrenus, who was acting on the instructions of the most senior of Catiline’s followers, the patrician Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura—the former consul of 71, who had been expelled from the senate in 70 (along with Antonius and Curius), and was now praetor. Umbrenus told the envoys that if they supported the conspiracy, they would get what they wanted. They were then introduced to a conspirator of equestrian rank, Publius Gabinius Capito, and were told the names of others who were in the plot. After debating among themselves what to do, the envoys decided to report what they had learned to their tribe’s patron, Quintus Fabius Sanga (who was presumably the person who had put their case before the senate); and he went straight to Cicero. Seeing this as an opportunity to acquire incriminating evidence, and well aware of the propaganda value of the Catilinarians being caught conspiring with Rome’s traditional enemy, the Gauls, he told Fabius to direct the Allobroges to ask the ringleaders for written statements which they could show to their people. Three of the conspirators complied: Lentulus, a patrician senator Gaius Cornelius Cethegus, andanother
eques
, Lucius Statilius. A fourth conspirator, Lucius Cassius Longinus, a praetor with Cicero in 66 and one of the unsuccessful candidates for the consulship of 63, suspected a trap and replied that since he was going to Gaul anyway he need not put anything in writing—then promptly left Rome. The plan that was agreed was that the envoys would leave Rome by the Mulvian Bridge, just outside Rome to the north (on the road leading to the Via Cassia); they would be escorted as far as Faesulae by Titus Volturcius, a native of Cortona in Etruria; and then, after a meeting with Catiline, they would complete their journey to Gaul on their own. In addition to the statements which the Gauls were to take with them, Volturcius would take a personal letter from Lentulus to be delivered to Catiline, saying that Catiline ought to enlist slaves—something that he had always refused to do, since his rising was not a slave revolt and it would be highly damaging to his cause if it were perceived as being one, or could be represented as one. (The purpose of this letter must have been to give Catiline a means of assuring himself that Volturcius was not a spy, since Volturcius had joined the conspiracy only after Catiline’s departure from Rome. One scholar has suspected that the letter was in fact a plant by Cicero; but Lentulus would later acknowledge in the senate that the handwriting was his.)
    The envoys duly informed Cicero of the plan that had been arranged. He then ordered two of the praetors, Lucius Valerius Flaccus and Gaius Pomptinus, both military men, to place an ambush at the Mulvian Bridge on the