That Cicero with other Senators should be murdered seems to have been their first object, and that then the Consulship should be seized by force.

On the 21st of October Cicero made his first report to the Senate as to the conspiracy, and called upon Catiline for his answer.

It was then that Catiline made his famous reply: "That the Republic had two bodies, of which one was weak and had a bad head"-- meaning the aristocracy, with Cicero as its chief--"and the other strong, but without any head," meaning the people; "but that as for himself, so well had the people deserved of him, that as long as he lived a head should be forth-coming."[196] Then, at that sitting, the Senate decreed, in the usual formula, "That the Consuls were to take care that the Republic did not suffer."[197] On the 22d of October, the new Consuls, Silanus and Murena, were elected.

On the 23d, Catiline was regularly accused of conspiracy by Paulus Lepidus, a young nobleman, in conformity with a law which had been enacted fifty-five years earlier, "de vi publica," as to violence applied to the State.

Two days afterward it was officially reported that Manlius--or Mallius, as he seems to have been generally called--Catiline's lieutenant, had openly taken up arms in Etruria.