The Catiline Conspiracy—A Sore Loser?

            Lucius Sergius Catilina was a Roman politician in the first century B.C. He is only truly known for his attempted overthrow of the Roman government in 63-62 B.C. Though he could trace his own ancestry to a companion of Aeneas, no one in Catiline’s family had held the consulship for several generations. Catiline himself served in the Social War as a military tribune, and was later tried (and acquitted) of being romantically involved with a Vestal Virgin. In 68 B.C. he was governor of Africa, and two years later ran for the consulship. His candidacy was refused under accusations of extortion. In 63 he ran again, but lost behind the senate-supported Cicero. After losing another election also in 63, Catiline set his sights on a revolution against the government. Though the documents below will explore much of this conspiracy, a brief rundown will appear here.

            After the loss of his election, Catiline began recruiting an army in Etruria with a group of back-bench senators. Though Catiline’s co-conspirators attempted to assassinate Cicero on 7 November, 63, they failed due to an informant who found out about the conspiracy. The next day, Cicero denounced Catiline (who was in attendance) to the senate. Catiline then fled to Allobroges under the cover of sending himself into voluntary exile whilst he prepared his army. Unfortunately for him, during the course of the conspiracy Cicero’s troops intercepted incriminating letters which Cicero himself read to the Senate. The day after this took place, four conspirators were put to death. This caused many men to desert Catiline’s army in the north, leaving him with 10,000 men. Two senatorial armies later trapped Catiline and his men in northern Etruria, where they were massacred. Catiline himself died fighting at the head of his army.

            Though ambitious for power, Catiline saw himself as the champion of the poor and oppressed against an entrenched and unresponsive oligarchy. His economic program attracted small landholders in many parts of Italy, especially Etruria, who had been ruined in the Sullan confiscations.

The Character and Career of Catiline (63 B.C.)

Sallust

            In so populous and corrupt a city [as Rome is] Catiline easily kept about him, as a bodyguard, crowds of the lawless and desperate. All of the shameless libertines and profligate rascals were his associates and intimate friends—the men who had squandered their paternal estates by gaming, luxury, sensuality, and all too who had plunged heavily into debt to buy immunity for crimes; all assassins or sacrilegious persons from every quarter, convicted, or dreading conviction for their misdeeds; all, likewise, for whom their tongue or hand won a livelihood by perjury or bloodshed; all, in short, whom wickedness, poverty, or a guilty conscience goaded were friends to Catiline.

            If any man of character as yet unblemished fell into his society, he presently rendered him by daily intercourse and temptation like to and equal the rest. But it was the young whose acquaintance he chiefly courted and easily ensnared. For as the passions of each, according to his years, were aroused, he furnished mistresses to some, bought horses and dogs for others, and spared, in a word, neither his purse nor his character, if he could make them his devoted and trustworthy supporters.

            Catiline was alleged to have corrupted a Vestal Virgin and wrought many vile crimes; at last, smitten with passion for a  certain Aurelia, he murdered his own grown-up son because she objected to marrying him and having in the same house a grown-up stepson. And this crime seems to me to have been the chief cause of hurrying forward his conspiracy. For his guilty mind, at peace neither with gods nor with men, found no comfort either waking or sleeping, so utterly did conscience desolate his tortured spirit. His complexion, in consequence, was pale, his eyes haggard, his walk sometimes quick and sometimes slow, and distraction was plainly evident in every feature and look.

            The young men. . . he enticed by various methods into evil practices. From among them he furnished false witnesses and forgers of signatures; and he taught them all to regard with equal unconcern property and danger. At length when he had stripped them of all character and shame he led them to other and greater iniquities. When there was no ready motive for crime he nevertheless stirred  them up to murder quite inoffensive persons, just as if they had injured him, lest their hand or heart should grow torpid for want of employment.

            Trusting to such confederates and comrades, and knowing that the load of debt was everywhere great, and that the veterans of Sulla, having spent their bounty money too freely now were longing for a civil war, remembering their spoils and former victory, Catiline accordingly formed the design of overthrowing the government.

Catiline’s Speech to his Conspirators (63 B.C.)

Lucius Catilina

            If your courage and fidelity had not been sufficiently proved by me, this favorable opportunity would have occurred to no purpose; mighty hopes, absolute power, would in vain be within our grasp; nor should I, depending on irresolution or fickle-mindedness pursue contingencies instead of certainties. But as I have, on many remarkable occasions, experienced your bravery and attachment to me, I have ventured to engage in a most important and glorious enterprise. I am aware too that whatever advantages or evils affect you, the same affect me; and to have the same desires and the same aversions is assuredly a firm bond of friendship.

            What I have been meditation you have already heard separately. But my ardor for action is daily more and more excited when I consider what our future condition of life must be unless we ourselves assert our claims to liberty. For since the government has fallen under the power and jurisdiction of a few, kings and princes have constantly been their tributaries; nations and states have paid them taxes, but all the rest of us, however brave and worthy, whether noble or plebeian, have been regarded as a mere mob, without interest or authority, and subject to those to whom, if the state were in a sound condition, we should be a terror. Hence all influence, power, honor, and wealth are in their hands, or where they dispose of them. To us they have left only insults, dangers, persecutions, and poverty. To such indignities, O bravest of men, how long will you submit? It is not better to die in a glorious attempt than after having been the sport of other men’s insolence, to resign a wretched and degraded existence with ignominy?

            But success (I call gods and men to witness!) is in our own hands. Our years are fresh, our spirit is unbroken, among our oppressors, on the contrary, through age and wealth a general debility has been produced. We have, therefore, only to make a beginning. The course of events will accomplish the rest.

            Who in the world, indeed, that has the feelings of a man, can endure that they should have a superfluity of riches, to squander in building over seas and leveling mountains, and that means should be wanting to us even for the necessities of life; that they should join together two houses or more and that we should not have a hearth to call our own? The, though they purchase pictures, statues, and embossed plate; though they pull down new buildings and erect others, and lavish and abuse their wealth in every possible method, yet cannot, with the utmost efforts of caprice, exhaust it. But for us there is poverty at home, debts abroad; our present circumstances are bad, our prospects much worse, and what, in a word, have we left, but a miserable existence?

            Will you not, then, awake to action? Behold that liberty, that liberty for which you have so often wished, with wealth, honor, and glory, are set before your eyes. All these prizes fortune offers to the victorious. Let the enterprise itself then, let the opportunity. Let your property, your dangers, and the glorious spoils of war animate you far more than my words. Use me either as your leader or your fellow soldier; neither my heart nor my hand shall be wanting to you. These objects I hope to effect, in concert with you, in the character of consul; unless, indeed, my expectation deceives me and you prefer to be slaves rather than masters.

Cicero Denounces Catiline in the Senate (63 B.C.)

Sallust

            A few days later, in a meeting of the senate, Lucius Saenius, one of its members, read a letter which he said had been brought to him from Faesulae, stating that Gaius Manilius [a co-conspirator of Catiline] had taken the field with a large force on the twenty-seventh of October. At the same time, as is usual in such a crisis, omens and portents were reported by some, while others told of the holding of meetings, of the transportation of arms, and of insurrections of the slaves at Capua and in Apulia.

            Thereupon by decree of the senate Quintus Marcius Rexwas was sent to Faesulae and Quintus Metellus Creticus to Apulia and its neighborhood.

            These precautions struck the community with terror and the aspect of the city was changed. In place of extreme gaiety and frivolity, the fruit of long-continued peace, there was sudden and general gloom. Men were uneasy and apprehensive, put little confidence in any place of security or in any human being, were neither at war nor at peace, and measured the peril each by his own fears. The women, too, whom the greatness of our country had hitherto shielded from the terrors of war, were in a pitiful state of anxiety, raised suppliant hands to heaven, bewailed the fate of their little children, asked continual questions, trembled at everything, and throwing aside haughtiness and self-indulgence, despaired of themselves and of their country.

            But Catiline’s pitiless spirit persisted in the same attempts, although defenses were preparing, and he himself had been arraigned by Lucius Paulus under the Plautian law. Finally, in order to conceal his designs or to clear himself, as though he had merely been the object of some private slander, he came into the senate. Then the consul Marcus Tullius, either fearing his presence or carried away by indignation, delivered a brilliant speech of great service to the state, which he later wrote out and published.

            When he took his seat, Catiline, prepared as he was to deny everything, with downcast eyes and pleading accents began to beg the Fathers of the Senate not to believe any unfounded charge against him; he was sprung from such a family, he said, and had so ordered his life from youth up, that he had none save the best of prospects. They must not suppose that he, a patrician, who like his forefathers had rendered a great service to the Roman people would be benefited by the overthrow of the government, while its savior was Marcus Tullius, a resident alien in the city of Rome. When he would have added other insults he was shouted down by the whole body who called him traitor and assassin. Then in a transport of fury he cried, “Since I am brought to bay by my enemies and driven desperate, I will put out my fire by general devastation!”

            With this he rushed from the senate-house and went home. There after thinking long upon the situation, since his designs upon the consul made no headway and he perceived that the city was protected against fire by watchmen, believing it best to increase the size of his army and secure many of the necessities of war before the legions were enrolled, he left for the camp of Manlius with a few followers in the dead of night.

Catiline’s Last Stand (January of 62 B.C.)

Sallust

            When Petreius, after making all of his preparations, gave the signal with the trumpet, he ordered his cohorts to advance slowly; the army of the enemy followed their example. After they had reached a point where battle could be joined by the skirmishers, the hostile armies rushed upon each other with loud shouts, then threw down their pikes and took to the sword. The veterans, recalling their old-time prowess, advanced bravely to close quarters; the enemy, not lacking in courage, stood their ground, and there was a terrific struggle. Meanwhile Catiline, with his light-armed troops was busy in the van, aided those who were hard pressed, summoned fresh troops to replace the wounded, had an eye to everything, and at the same time fought hard himself, often striking down the foe—thus at once performing the duties of a valiant soldier and of a skillful leader.

            When Petreius saw that Catiline was making so much stronger a fight than he had expected, he led his praetorian cohort against the enemy’s centre, threw them into confusion, and slew those who resisted in various pars of the field; then he attacked the rest on both flanks at once. Manlius and the man from Faesulae were among the first to fall, sword in hand. When Catiline say that hi sarmy was routed and that he was left with a mere handful of men, mindful of his birth and former rank he plunged into the thickest of the enemy and there fell fighting, his body pierced through-and-through.

            When the battle was ended it became evident that boldness and resolution had pervaded Catiline’s army. For almost every man covered with his body, when life was gone, the position which he had taken when alive at the beginning of the conflict. A few, indeed, in the centre, whom the praetorian cohort had scattered, lay a little apart from the rest, but the wounds even of these were in front. But Catiline was found far in advance of his men amid a heap of slain foemen, still breathing slightly and showing in his face the indomitable spirit which had animated him when alive. Finally, out of the whole army not a single citizen of free birth was taken during the battle or in flight, showing that all ahd valued their own lives no more highly than those of their enemies.

            But the army of the Roman people gained no joyful or bloodless victory, for all the most valiant had either fallen in the fight or come off with severe wounds. Many, too, who had gone from the camp to visit the field or to pillage, on turning over the bodies of the rebels found now a friend, now a guest or kinsman; some also recognized their personal enemies. Thus the whole army was variously affected with sorrow and grief, rejoicing and lamentation.