1And do you not see, judges, what further thing is added to these evils? 1You, you I call upon, Cato; 1do you not foresee the storm of your year? 1For already at yesterday's public meeting there thundered the pernicious voice of a tribune-elect, your colleague; 1against whom your mind, and all the good men who called you to stand for the tribunate, have taken many precautions. 1All that has been stirred up over these three years, from the time when, as you know, the plan of murdering the senate was formed by Catiline and Piso, is bursting out in these days, these months, this moment. 82What place is there, judges, what time, what day, what night, when I am not rescued and do not escape from the plots and daggers of those men, not only by my own counsel but far more by divine counsel?
82Nor do they want me killed on my own account, but want a watchful consul removed from the defence of the state. 82Nor would they any less wish, Cato, to get rid of you too somehow, if they could; 82and that, believe me, is what they are working at and contriving. 82They see how much spirit there is in you, how much talent, how much authority, how much protection for the state; 82but when they have seen the tribunician power stripped of the authority and help of a consul, then they think they will more easily crush you, unarmed and weakened. 82For they do not fear that a substitute consul will be elected.
82They see that this will be in the power of your colleagues; 82they hope that Decimus Silanus, a distinguished man, can be exposed to them without a colleague, you without a consul, the state without protection. 83In these great affairs and these great dangers it is your duty, Cato, since you seem to me to have been born not for yourself but for your country, to see what is happening, to keep a helper, a defender, a partner in public affairs, a consul who is not self-seeking, a consul, as this time most demands, fitted by fortune to embrace peace, by knowledge to wage war, by spirit and experience to sustain whatever task you wish.