Though the designs of Catiline were not yet publicly known, yet
considerable trouble immediately followed Cicero's entrance upon
the consulship. For, on the one side, those who were disqualified
by the laws of Sylla from holding any public offices, being
neither inconsiderable in power nor in number, came forward as
candidates and entreated the people; on the other hand, the
tribunes of the people proposed laws to the same purpose,
constituting a commission of ten persons, with unlimited powers,
in whom as supreme governors should be vested the right of selling
the public lands of all Italy and Syria and Pompey's new
conquests, of judging and banishing whom they pleased, of planting
colonies, of taking money out of the treasury, and of levying and
paying what soldiers should be though needful. And several of the
nobility favored this law, but especially Caius Antonius, Cicero's
colleague, in hopes of being one of the ten. But what gave the
greatest fear to the nobles was, that he was thought privy to the
conspiracy of Catiline, and not to dislike it because of his great
debts.
Cicero, endeavoring in the first place to provide a remedy against
this danger, procured a decree assigning to Antonius the province
of Macedonia, he himself declining that of Gaul, which was offered
to him.
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