But the book in which this was written is lost, and we have only the Epitome, or heading of the book, of which we know that it was not written by Livy.[191] Suetonius, who got his story not improbably from Livy, tells us that Caesar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with Crassus;[192] and he goes on to say that Cicero, writing subsequently to one Axius, declared that "Caesar had attempted in his Consulship to accomplish the dominion which he had intended to grasp in his AEdileship" the year in question.

There is, however, no such letter extant.

Asconius, who, as I have said before, wrote in the time of Tiberius, declares that Cicero in his lost oration, "In toga candida," accused Crassus of having been the author of the conspiracy.

Such is the information we have; and if we elect to believe that Caesar was then joined with Catiline, we must be guided by our ideas of probability rather than by evidence.[193] As I have said before, conspiracies had been very rife.

To Caesar it was no doubt becoming manifest that the Republic, with its oligarchs, must fall.