Lentulus

Cato, the very man Serenus defended so furiously, had his own answer too.

Seneca tells in his book on anger that once, while Cato was pleading in court, an opponent named Lentulus spat right in his face.

Cato wiped it off and said calmly something like this, "I'll tell everyone, Lentulus, that those who say you have no mouth are mistaken." In Latin, having a mouth also meant having nerve.

A gob of spit turned into a play on words.

The one left looking ridiculous wasn't Cato.

insist on learning my personal opinion? Indeed, you show an unreasonable degree of curiosity.

For the salvation of all Italy, the execution of Lentulus and the other conspirators must be carried out before the sun sets.

Yes, but what about the law which prohibits capital punishment without a formal trial to the people? An excellent question to which there is a more excellent answer.

The Centronian law was passed to protect Roman citizens.

Believe me, we would rather have won our rights peacefully on the floor of the Senate than we would have determined it need be to fight for them.

Now all that's changed.

Lentulus and our friends in Rome have become a symbol, a very real symbol.

If the Senate dooms them without a fair trial, it will mean that the Constitution is doomed.

What we have here to deal with is a purely social revolution, which had at its object neither more nor less than tabulae novae, or, in plain English, the extinction of debt.

Lentulus and Cethegus have been blamed for their overtures to the Alabroges, and circumstances certainly made this intrigue dangerous, but they were only doing then, under the eyes of the consul, what Catiline's agents for the preceding half-year had been doing in every district in Italy.

The motive to which they appealed in asking the help of the Alabroges was the only motive to which they could have appealed with any success when they were tampering with the inhabitants of the different country districts.

The demand for the abolition of debts is the keynote of the manifesto of Manlius, which Sallust could not have invented entirely out of his own head.

It was the first of June, in the year when Lucius Caesar and Gaius Fugulus were consuls, that he began making overtures to single individuals, encouraging some and sounding others, and expatiating on his own resources, on the lack of preparation in the government, and on the great prizes a conspiracy would gain.

When he had satisfied himself on the points he desired, he summoned a meeting of all those whose needs were the most pressing, in spirit the most daring.

To this meeting came Publius Lentulus Sora, Publius Altronius, Lucius Cassius Longinus, Gaius Cethegus, Publius and Servius, the two sons of Servius Sulla, Lucius Vargunteius, Quintus Annius, Marcus Porcius Lyca, Lucius Bestia, Quintus Curius, all of senatorial rank.

With them were Marcus Fulvius Nobilor, Lucius Statilius, Publius Gabinius Capito, and Gaius Cornelius from the equestrian order, besides many persons from the military colonies and towns, men of rank in their own neighborhood.

He protested, too, that Cornutus was innocent, and that his terror was groundless, as would easily be perceived if other names were given up, for he never would have plotted the Emperor's murder and a revolution with only one confederate.

Upon this the prosecutor named Gnaeus Lentulus and Seius Tubero, to the great confusion of the emperor at finding a hostile rebellion and disturbance of the public peace, charged on two leading men in the state his own intimate friends, the first of whom was in extreme old age, and the second in very feeble health.

They were, however, at once acquitted.

As for the father, his slaves were examined by torture, and the result was unfavourable to the accuser.

It happened that the trial at this time of Vachinus Montanus, a popular wit, convinced the hesitating Tiberius that he ought to shun all assemblies of the senate, where speeches, often true and offensive, were flung in his very face.

Vachinus was charged with insulting expressions towards the emperor, and while the witness, Aemilius, a military man, in his eagerness to prove the case, repeated the whole story and amid angry clamour struggled on with loud assertion tiberius heard the reproaches by which he was assailed in secret and was so deeply impressed that he exclaimed that he would clear himself either at once or on a legal inquiry and the entreaties of friends with the flattery of the whole assembly hardly restored his composure as for vercinus he suffered the penalty of treason but the emperor clinging all the more obstinately to the harshness with which he had been reproached in regard to accused persons punished aquilia with exile for the crime of adultery with various ligure although lentulus gaetulicus the consul-elect had proposed that she should be sentenced under the julian law he next struck off appidius meryla from the register of the senate for not having sworn obedience to the legislation of the divine augustus then a hearing was given to embassies from the lacedaemonians and messenians on the question of the temple of diana in the marshes the lacedaemonians asserted that it had been dedicated by their ancestors and in their territory and appealed to the records of their history and the hymns of poets but it had been wrested from they said by the arms of the macedonian philip with whom they had fought and subsequently restored by the decision of caius caesar and marcus antonius the messenians on the contrary alleged the ancient division of the peloponnesus among the descendants of hercules in which the territory of denthelia where the temple stood had fallen to their king records of this event still existed engraven on stone and ancient bronze but if they were asked for the testimony of poetry and of history they had it they said in greater abundance and authenticity philip had not decided arbitrarily but according to fact and king antigonus as also the general memmius had pronounced the same judgment such too had been the award of the milesians to whom the arbitration had been publicly entrusted and finally of artidius germanus the praetor of achaia and so the question was decided in favour of the messenians next the people of segesta petitioned for the restoration of the temple of venus at mount eryx which had fallen to ruin from its antiquity they repeated the well-known story of its origin which delighted tiberius he undertook the work willingly as being a kinsman of the goddess after this was discussed a petition from the city of massilia and sanction given to the president of publius who having been legally banished from rome had been adopted as a citizen by the people of smyrna volcatius moschus also an exile, had been received with a similar privilege by the inhabitants of Massilia, and had left his property to their community, as being now his own country.

Two men of noble rank died in that year, Gnaeus Lentulus and Lucius Domitius.

It had been the glory of Lentulus, to say nothing of his consulship and his triumphal distinctions over the Gaetuli, to have borne poverty with a good grace, then to have attained great wealth, which had been blamelessly acquired and was modestly enjoyed.

But with the wound We gain the better cause: the crime is theirs.

No war is this, but for offended Rome We wreck the vengeance, as when Catiline Lifted against her roofs the flaming brand, And partner in his fury, Lentulus, And mad Cethegus with his naked arm.

Is such thy madness, Caesar? When the Fates With great Camillus' and Metellus' names Might place thine own, dost thou prefer to rank With Marius and Cinna? Swift shall be thy fall, As Lepidus before the sword of Catulus, Or, who Miaxas felt, Carbo, now buried In Sicanian tomb; or who in exile Roused Iberia's hordes, Sertorius.

Yet, Witness heaven! with these I hate to rank thee, Hate the task that Rome has laid upon me To oppose thy rage.

And men shall read in hope and fear the story of the war And breathless pray as though it were to come for that long since accomplished and for thee thus far Pompeius shall that prayer be given.

Reflected from their arms the opposing sun filled all the slope with radiance as they marched in ordered ranks to that ill-fated fight and stood arranged for battle.

On the left thou Lentulus hadst charge two legions there the fourth and bravest of them all the first while on the right Domitius ever staunch though fates be adverse stood.

In middle line the hardy soldiers from Cilician lands in Scipio's care their chief in Libyan days today their comrade.