Читать книгу Yale Classics (Vol. 2) - Луций Анней Сенека - Страница 464

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Nor were the conspirators and their accomplices the only disaffected persons; the whole body of the populace, from their passion for a revolution, approved Catiline’s designs; nor in this did they act contrary to their usual character: for in all states, those that are poor envy the possessions of the great; extol the extravagant; hate what they have been long accustomed to; long for changes; and, from a dislike to their own condition, endeavour to throw every thing into confusion: in times of public disorder and discord they find their subsistence without any trouble; since poverty is always attended with this advantage, that it has nothing to lose. But the Roman populace were become extremely degenerate, from several causes; chiefly because all who were remarkable for wickedness and violence; such as had squandered their fortunes in riot and extravagance; in a word, all they who were forced from their native country for their crimes flocked to Rome from all quarters, as a common resort. Many again were continually reflecting on Sylla’s success; through which they had seen some common soldiers raised to the dignity of senators, and others so enriched, that in pomp and splendour they lived like kings; and every one hoped, in case of a civil war, to gain the victory, and the same advantages from it. Besides, the young men in the provinces, who were accustomed to earn a scanty subsistence by their labour, being drawn to Rome by the allurements of public and private largesses, preferred the ease of the city to their hard labour in the fields: these, with all others of the like character, found their support in the calamities of the state. So that it is not to be wondered at that such men as these, oppressed with poverty, of dissolute lives and extravagant views, should consult the interests of the state just as far as they were subservient to their own. They, too, whose parents had been proscribed, whose estates were confiscated, and who had been deprived of the privileges of citizens under the tyranny of Sylla, had the same expectations from a war as the others had. Moreover, all they who were of any party different from that of the senate wished rather to see the state embroiled than themselves without power: a mighty evil! which, after having lain dormant for many years, had again revived in the city.