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114 weak point in the position of the democrats. They had within their ranks men who could not afford to wait, to whom the want of immediate success meant absolute ruin; these could not be withheld from attempts which in their failure brought discredit on the democratic party, but which, if they had succeeded, would have destroyed that party altogether and profited no one but Pompey. At the head of this desperate class was Catiline himself, and around him were other men of high family whom reckless luxury and extravagance had brought to the verge of bankruptcy and ruin. If these men could see their way clear to a political revolution, they might hope to restore their fortunes in a general scramble for the good things of the government; but, if they were debarred from this chance, they were resolved to fall back on counsels of despair, and, as Catiline afterwards put it, "to extinguish the fire which would consume them by bringing down the roof-tree on the top of it." The evil precedents of Marius and of Sulla appealed with fatal seductiveness to these ruined aristocrats. A civil war, a massacre, a proscription, a confiscation appeared things possible and hopeful. They could point to men who in the late troubles had suddenly emerged from poverty to enormous wealth and from obscurity to domination. Their power of judgment was impaired, partly by the dazzling contrast of these hopes with their present embarrassments, partly by the deluding atmosphere of secret cabals in which the vapourings and