Note 200 — Chapter XI · SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION.
Reading edition
“Sane vetus Urbi fœnebre malum (says Tacitus, Ann. vi, 16) et seditionum discordiarumque creberrima causa,” etc: compare Appian, Bell. Civil. Præfat.; and Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, l. xxii, c. 22.
The constant hopes and intrigues of debtors at Rome, to get rid of their debts by some political movement, are nowhere more forcibly brought out than in the second Catilinarian Oration of Cicero, c. 8-9: read also the striking harangue of Catiline to his fellow-conspirators (Sallust, B. Catilin. c. 20-21).