Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/189



CHAPTER VI.

CICERO'S IDEAL PARTY.

63-60 B.C.

HE fortunes of Catiline had been watched with interest from the other side of the Ægean Sea. Pompey saw clearly what a marvellous piece of good fortune the folly of the revolutionaries was preparing for him, and in order to take advantage of it he sent one of his lieutenants, Metellus Nepos, to Rome in time for the tribunician elections in 63 B.C. It was hoped that Catiline might make sufficient head against the government to alarm all classes, and Metellus as tribune was to seize the opportunity to carry by general assent a decree calling upon Pompey to return to Italy with his army and save the State from the anarchists. Plutarch tells us that Cato, who had just set forth on a journey, met Nepos and his retinue entering the gates of Rome. Cato guessed that