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Catilina (108 BC – 62 BC) was a Roman Senator of the 1st century BC who is best known for the Catilinarian conspiracy, a supposed attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic, and in particular the power of the aristocratic Senate.[1]
Catiline was born in 108 BC to one of the oldest patrician families in Rome, gens Sergia.
Although his family was of consular heritage, they were then declining in both social and financial fortunes.
Virgil later gave the family an ancestor, Sergestus, who had come with Aeneas to Italy, presumably because they were notably ancient.
But they had not been prominent for centuries.
The last Sergius to be consul had been Gnaeus Sergius Fidenas Coxo in 380 BC.
Later, these factors would dramatically shape Catiline's ambitions and goals as he would desire above all else to restore the political heritage of his family along with its financial power.
An able commander, Catiline had a distinguished military career.
He served in the Social War with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Cicerone, under Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo in 89 BC.
During Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Cinna and Gnaeus Papirius Carbo's regime, Catiline played no major role, but he remained politically secure.
He later supported Lucius Cornelius Sulla in the civil war of 84 BC–81 BC.
It was during Sulla's proscriptions that he allegedly tortured, maimed and then killed and beheaded his brother-in-law, Marcus Marius Gratidiano, at the tomb of Catulo, he then carried the head through the streets of Rome and deposited it at Sulla's feet at the Temple of Apollo.
He is also accused of murdering his wife and son so that he could marry the wealthy and beautiful Orestilla, daughter of the Consul Orestes.
In the early 70s BC Catilina serves abroad, possibly with Publius Servilius Vatia in Cilicia.
In 73 BC, Catilina was brought to trial for adultery with the Vestal Virgin, Fabia,[5] who was a half-sister of Cicero's wife, Terentia, but Quintus Lutatius Catulus, the principal leader of the Optimates, testified in his favor, and eventually Catiline was acquitted.
Catilina was praetor in 68 BC, and for the following two years was the propraetorian governor for Africa.
Upon his return home in 66 BC, he presented himself as a candidate for the consular elections but a delegation from Africa appealing to the Senate, indicting him for abuses, prevented this as the incumbent consul, Lucius Volcatius Tullus, disallowed the candidacy.
He was finally brought to trial in 65 BC, where he received the support of many distinguished men, including many consulars.
Even one of the consuls for 65 BC, Lucius Manlius Torquato, demonstrated his support for Catiline.[10]
Cicero also contemplated defending Catiline in court.
Eventually, Catiline was acquitted.
The author of Commentariolum Petitionis, possibly Cicero's brother, Quintus Cicero, suggests that Catiline was only acquitted by the fact that he left the court as poor as some of his judges had been before the trial, implicating that he bribed his judges.
During 64 BC, Catiline was officially accepted as a candidate in the consular election for 63 BC.
He ran alongside Gaius Antonius Hybrida who some suspect may have been a fellow conspirator.
Nevertheless, Catiline was defeated by Cicero and Antonius Hybrida in the consular election, largely because the Roman aristocracy feared Catiline and his economic plan.
The Optimates were particularly repulsed because he promoted the plight of the urban plebs along with his economic policy of tabulae novae, the universal cancellation of debts.
He was brought to trial later that same year, but this time it was for his role in the Sullan proscriptions.
At the insistence of Cato the Younger, then quaestor, all men who had profited during the proscriptions were brought to trial.
For his involvement, Catiline was accused of killing his former brother-in-law Marcus Marius Gratidianus, carrying this man’s severed head through the streets of Rome and then having Sulla add him to the proscription to make it legal.
Other allegations claimed that he murdered several other notable men.
Despite this, Catiline was acquitted again, though some surmise that it was through the influence of Giulio Cesare who presided over the court.
Catiline chose to stand for the consulship again in the following year.
However, by the time of the consular election for 62 BC, Catiline had lost much of the political support he had enjoyed during the previous year's election.
He was defeated by two other candidates, Decimus Junius Silanus and Lucius Licinius Murena, ultimately crushing his political ambitions.
The only remaining chance of attaining the consulship would be through an illegitimate means, conspiracy or revolution.
The failure of the conspiracy in Rome was a massive blow to Catilina.
Upon hearing of the death of Lentulus and the others, many men deserted Catilina's army, reducing the size from about 10,000 to a mere 3,000.
Catilina and his ill-equipped army began to march towards Gaul and then back towards Rome several times in vain attempts to avoid a battle.
Inevitably, Catilina was forced to fight when Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer with three legions in the north blocked his escape.
So, Catilina chose to engage Antonius Hybrida’s army near Pistoria hoping that he would lose the battle and dishearten the other Republican armies.
Catilina also hoped that perhaps he would have an easier time battling Antonius who, he assumed, would fight less determinedly, as he had once been allied with Catilina.
Catilina may have still believed that Antonius Hybrida was conspiring with him, which may have been true as Antonius Hybrida claimed to be ill on the day of the battle.
Nevertheless, Catilina himself bravely fought as a soldier on the front lines of the battle.
Once he saw that there was no hope of victory, he threw himself into the thick of the fray.
When the corpses were counted, all Catiline’s soldiers were found with frontal wounds, and his corpse was found far in front of his own lines.
In La guerra di Catilina, the first-century Roman historian Sallust gives the following account:
When the battle was ended it became evident what boldness and resolution had pervaded Catiline’s army.
For almost every man covered with his body, when Catilina's 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 Catilina 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.
Catilina was found, far in advance of his men, among the dead bodies of the enemy; a most glorious death, had he thus fallen for his country.
From Florus' Epitome de Tito Livio (II.xii)
After Catilina’s death, many of the poor still regarded him with respect and did not view him as the traitor and villain that Cicero claimed he was.
However, the aristocratic element of Rome certainly viewed him in a much darker light.
Sallust wrote an account of the conspiracy that epitomized Catiline as representative of all of the evils festering in the declining Roman republic.
In his account, Sallustio attributes countless crimes and atrocities to Catilina, but even he refuses to heap some of the most outrageous claims on him, particularly a ritual that involved the drinking of blood of a sacrificed child.
Later historians such as Floro and Dio Cassio, far removed from the original events, recorded the claims of Sallust and the aforementioned rumors as facts.
Up until the modern era Catiline was equated, as Sallust described, to everything depraved and contrary to both the laws of the gods and men.
Nevertheless, many Romans still viewed his character with a degree of respect.
Well after Catiline's death and the end of the threat of the conspiracy, even Cicero reluctantly admitted that Catiline was an enigmatic man who possessed both the greatest of virtues and the most terrible of vices.
Cicero said,
"Catilina had many things about him which served to allure men to the gratification of their passions."
"Catilina had also many things which acted as incentives to industry and toil."
"The vices of lust raged in him; but at the same time he was conspicuous for great energy and military skill."
"Nor do I believe that there ever existed so
strange a prodigy upon the earth,
made up in such a manner of the
most various, and different and
inconsistent studies and desires."
Catiline spoke with an eloquence that demanded loyalty from his followers and strengthened the resolve of his friends.
Without doubt Catiline possessed a degree of courage that few have, and he died a particularly honourable death in Roman society.
Unlike most Roman generals of the late republic, Catilina offered himself to his followers both as a general and as soldier on the front lines.
While history has viewed Catilina through the lenses of his enemies, some modern historians have reassessed Catilina, such as Michael Parenti, in "The Assassination of Julius Caesar".
To some extent Catilina’s name has been freed from many of its previous associations, and even to some the name of Catilina has undergone a transformation from a traitor and villain to a heroic agrarian reformer.
Thus, some view Catilina as a reformer such as the Gracchi who met similar resistance from the government.
However, many place him somewhere in between, a man who used the plight of the poor to suit his personal interests and a politician of the time no more corrupt than any other.
Interestingly in parts of Italy up until the Middle Ages the legend of 'Catellina' continued to exist and was favourable to him.
Still other scholarly texts, such as H E Gould and J L Whietely's Macmillan edition of Cicero's In Catilinam, dismiss Catilina as a slightly deranged revolutionary, concerned more with the cancellation of his own debts, accrued in running for so many consulships, and in achieving the status he believed his by birth-right due to his family name.
Title page of Ben Jonson's tragedy (1611) from the Folio of 1692
At least two major dramatists have written tragedies about Catilina: Ben Jonson, the English Jacobean playwright, wrote Catiline His Conspiracy in 1611.
Catiline was the first play by the Norwegian 'father of modern drama' Henrik Ibsen, written in 1850.
Antonio Salieri wrote an opera tragicomica in two acts on the subject of the Catiline Conspiracy entitled Catilina to a libretto by Giambattista Casti in 1792.
The work was left unperformed until 1994 due to its political implications during the French Revolution.
Here serious drama and politics were blended with high and low comedy.
The plot centered on a love affair between Catiline and a daughter of Cicero as well as the historic political situation.
Steven Saylor has written the novel Catilina's Riddle, where the plot evolves around the intrigue between Catilina and Cicero in 63 BC.
Catilina's conspiracy and Cicero's actions as Consul figure prominently in the novel Caesar's Women by Colleen McCullough as a part of her Masters of Rome series.
SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy, by John Maddox Roberts discusses Catiline's conspiracy.
Robert Harris' book Imperium, based on Cicero's letters, covers the developing career of Cicero with many references to his increasing interactions with Catiline.
The sequel, Lustrum (issued in the United States as Conspirata), deals with the five years surrounding the Catiline Conspiracy.
The Roman Traitor or the Days of Cicerone, Catone and Catilina: A True Tale of the Republic by Henry William Herbert originally published in 1853 in two volumes.
A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell, published in 1965, tells of the life of Cicero, especially in relation to Catilina and his conspiracy against Rome.
See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Winningham, Brandon (March 19, 2007) [2007]. Catiline. iUniverse, Inc. ISBN 978-0-595-42416-0.
- ^ Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae V.1; Vergil, Aeneid V.121
- ^ Sallust, Bellum Catilinae V.3
- ^ Cicero, Pro Caelio XII
- ^ She was later to become the Chief Vestal and to marry Publius Cornelius Dolabella as his first wife, per McCullough.
- ^ Cicero, "In Catilinam" III.9; Asconius 91C
- ^ a b Cicero, Pro Caelio IV
- ^ Sallust, Bellum Catilinae XVIII.3
- ^ Asconius 85-87, 89C
- ^ Cicero, Pro Sulla LXXXI
- ^ Cicero, Epistulae Ad Atticam I.2
- ^ Commentariolum Petitionis, 3
- ^ Sallust, Bellum Catilinae XXIII.5-XIV.1
- ^ Sallust, Bellum Catilinae XXI.2
- ^ The evidence is only sketchy that Catiline early in his life was married to a sister of Gratidianus, and some scholars, notably B.A. Marshall, have doubted Catiline's role in the killing. For further discussion, see Marcus Marius Gratidianus.
- ^ Asconius 84C
- ^ Sallust, Bellum Catilinae XXVI.1
- ^ Sallust, Bellum Catilinae XXVI.5
- ^ Sallust, Bellum Catilinae LVI-LXI
- ^ Sallust, Bellum Catilinae LIX
- ^ Sallust, Catiline's War, Book LXI, pt. 4 (translated by J. C. Rolfe).
- ^ Cicero, Pro Flacco XXXVIII
- ^ Sallust, Bellum Catilinae XX
- ^ Florus, Epitome de Tito Livio II.xii; Dio Cassius XXXVII.30.3
- ^ Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar; A People's History of Ancient Rome, The New Press, New York, 2004, ISBN 1-56584-797-0
- ^ L.P Wilkinson, Letters of Cicero, Hutchinson University Library, London, 1966
[edit] References
- Appian, Roman History
- Dio Cassius Cocceianus, Roman History
- Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Bellum Catilinae
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, In Catilinam
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Caelio
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Murena
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Sulla
- Quintus Tullius Cicero, Commentariolum Petitionis
- Duane A. March, "Cicero and the 'Gang of Five'," Classical World, volume 82 (1989) 225-234
[edit] External links
 | Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Catiline |
 | Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Catiline. |
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