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All these measures were strengthening your hands as a prosecutor, but weakening your chance as a candidate. And by them all a violent blow was struck at your hopes of success, as I warned you; and many very severe things were said about it by that most able and most eloquent man, Hortensius, owing to which my task of speaking now is the more difficult; as, after both he had spoken before me, and also Marcus Crassus, a man of the greatest dignity, and industry, and skill as an orator, I, coming in at the end, was not to plead some part of the cause, but to say with respect to the whole matter whatever I thought advisable. Therefore I am forced to recur to the same ideas, and to a great extent, O judges, I have to contend with a feeling of satiety on your part. But still, O Servius, do you not see that you completely lay the axe to the root of your chance as a candidate, when you give the Roman people cause for apprehension that Catiline might be made consul through your neglect and, I may almost say, abandonment of your canvass, while you were intent on your prosecution?