Records have been brought to light which have hitherto been buried, and testimonies are compared with testimonies which have not before been seen together.

But to imagine that a man may have been good who has lain under the ban of all the historians, all the poets, and all the tellers of anecdotes, and then to declare such goodness simply in accordance with the dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is to disturb rather than to assist history.

Of Catiline we at least know that he headed a sedition in Rome in the year of Cicero's Consulship; that he left the city suddenly; that he was killed in the neighborhood of Pistoia fighting against the Generals of the Republic, and that he left certain accomplices in Rome who were put to death by an edict of the Senate.

So much I think is certain to the most truculent doubter.

From his contemporaries, Sallust and Cicero, we have a very strongly expressed opinion of his character.