The Senate in Cicero's time was convened according to expedience, or perhaps as to the dignity of the occasion, in various temples.

Of these none had a higher reputation than that of the special Jupiter who is held to have befriended Romulus in his fight with the Sabines.

Here was launched that thunderbolt of eloquence which all English school-boys have known for its "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra." Whether it be from the awe which has come down to me from my earliest years, mixed perhaps with something of dread for the great pedagogue who first made the words to sound grandly in my ears, or whether true critical judgment has since approved to me the real weight of the words, they certainly do contain for my intelligence an expression of almost divine indignation.

Then there follows a string of questions, which to translate would be vain, which to quote, for those who read the language, is surely unnecessary.
It is said to have been a fault with Cicero that in his speeches he runs too much into that vein of wrathful interrogation which undoubtedly palls upon us in English oratory when frequent resort is made to it.

It seems to be too easy, and to contain too little of argument.