mischief was afoot, and in order to frustrate it he turned his horse's head and appeared as a rival candidate for the tribunate. Both Cato and Metellus Nepos were elected and entered on office on the 10th of December in the year 63 B.C.
If Catiline had succeeded better, and if the government had shown itself incapable of dealing with the conspiracy, Cato's opposition would have gone for very little, and a prize such as man never won before would have been within Pompey's grasp. Without serious danger, and without breach of duty or loyalty, he would have stepped at once into the position of "saviour of society"; he would have been a Sulla without guilt or bloodshed, claiming from the gratitude of his fellow-citizens that deference which a despot has to extort by force. Neither the jealous Nobles nor the baffled revolutionaries could have refused to recognise his pre-eminence and to accord him that place of acknowledged chief and protector of a free State, to which he aspired.
Such were the prospects of Pompey during the October and November of the year 63 B.C. His hopes were rudely shattered by the Nones of December. The conspiracy in the city was crushed, and Catiline's army had melted away. The "dignus vindice nodus" had been disentangled by other hands, and the "deus ex machina" had missed the opportunity for his appearance. Metellus Nepos proposed indeed that his patron should be given the command against Catiline[1]; but his tribuneship had
- ↑ Plutarch, Cato Minor, 26, 2. Schol. Bob. ad Cic. Pro Sestio, ch. 28 (Orelli, p. 302).
