Fool’s Gold

As political orations go, it was relatively short, some 3,400 words, and to the point. The opening remarks are still widely remembered and used after 2000 years:

How long will you abuse our patience, Catiline? How long will this fury of yours elude us? Whom will boldness, unbridled, fling itself to the end?

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?[6]

Also remembered is the famous exasperated exclamation, O tempora, o mores! (Oh, what times! Oh, what behaviour!).

Catiline was present when the speech was delivered. He replied to it by asking people not to trust Cicero because he was a self-made man with no family tradition of public office, and to trust himself because of the long experience of his family. Initially, Cicero’s words proved unpersuasive.[7] Catiline then ran from the building, hurling threats at the Senate.[citation needed] Later he left the city and claimed that he was placing himself in self-imposed exile at Marseille, but really went to the camp of Manlius, who was in charge of the army of rebels. The next morning Cicero assembled the people, and gave a further oration.