CICERO'S SPEECHES AGAINST LUCIUS SERGIUS CATILINA

Penguin Classics edition, introductory comments by Michael Grant

Lucius Sergius Catilina, who was about two years older than Cicero, belonged to an ancient but impoverished patrician family. He had become a supporter of Sulla in the Civil War of the late eighties and the bloodstained dictatorship that followed, obtained the praetorship in 68, and then became governor of Africa (Tunisia). He re- turned in mid-66 to find that the consuls-elect for the following year, Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius Autronius Paetus, having been found guilty of bribery during the elections, had been disqualified from office, the defeated candidates Lucius Aurelius Cotta and Lucius Manlius Torquatus being elected in their place. Catilina conceived the idea of offering himself as a candidate in opposition to these substitutes, but was not allowed to do so, since (as happened to many governors) he was facing a prosecution for illicit financial gains (extortion) in his province.

Then followed an affair, shrouded in mystery, which is known as the First Catilinarian Conspiracy. It appears that there was a plot to murder the two incoming consuls Cotta and Torquatus in the interests of the two men who had been disqualified. The historian Sallust and the commentator Quietus Asconius Pedianus (of the first century A.D.) believe Catilina was involved in the plot, but make another poverty-stricken nobleman, Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso, the prime mover. Suetonius on the other hand (writing in the second century A.D.) says that the main conspirators were Crassus and Caesar, who hoped to emerge as dictator and master of the horse respectively, with the intention of rearranging things according to their pleasure and then restoring the disqualified pair to the consulship. Suetonius says nothing about any part played by Catilina, whose name may perhaps have been introduced into the record in place of Publius SullaÕs, as a result of a tradition going back to Cicero - since he had defended Sulla in the courts and wanted to keep his name clear. But the true facts are still highly obscure; and in any case the plot, if it ever existed, was first postponed and then finally abandoned (February 65).

Catilina was acquitted on the provincial charge, and proceeded to stand for the consulship twice more, in successive years. He was defeated on both occasions, the first time by Cicero and Gaius Antonius Hybrida and on the second by Decimus Junius Silanus and Lucius Licinius Murena.(1) Supporters of the calibre of Crassus and Caesar (who was a recipient of CrassusÕ financial support) had been scared off by CatilinaÕs increasing tendency to adopt a policy of abolition of debts and redistribution of land, which threatened property owners. This was the chance of Cicero; Ônew menÕ, such as he was, very rarely reached the consulship, but now he seemed preferable to Catilina in conservative eyes, and in July 64 he was elected consul for 63 - a proud moment of his life to which he subsequently referred over and over again. Accordingly, at the next consular elections (late summer 63 for 62), he himself as consul was the presiding officer; and this was the occasion on which Catilina made his second attempt to win the consulship. Cicero later claimed that his life was in danger at the election, which is unlikely. However, Catilina was again defeated, and it was probably at this point that he abandoned constitutional methods and decided to achieve the headship of the state - and freedom from his debts - by conspiracy and revolutionary violence. How the situation then unfolded will be seen from the four Catilinarian speeches of Cicero which followed.

What was Catilina really like? CiceroÕs picture of his personal character, although admitting energy, talent and charm, is too classically frightful and diabolical to be true (and is somewhat modified in the speech for Caelius); the grammarians had good reason to call these orations the Invectives. On the other hand, there can be little doubt that after his second electoral defeat Catilina did intend to bring down the Republic by force. He was, of course, not alone in this ambition. The whole of the last century B.C. saw a rapidly augmenting process of dissolution, as one powerful figure after another used private armies and strong-arm political methods to subvert the oligarchic caucus which had proved so incapable of governing an empire. Lucius Sulla succeeded but abdicated, Pompeius was at this moment holding a perilously large command, fourteen years later Caesar was to assume a dictatorship which only ended with his murder; and Octavian then became the emperor Augustus. Where Catilina fell short of them was probably not so much in the ethical qualities so vigorously found wanting by Cicero as in success and skill; the old idea of redistributing property, though by now a social revolutionary commonplace, was not the best way to win influential supporters. The most that can be said of Catilina (apart from his capacity to keep devoted supporters) was that his own poverty and political disappointments inspired him with a rather vague anger against the injustice of things in general. And this was, indeed, flagrant, in a corruptly mismanaged Italy and empire where the distribution of wealth had become more and more glaringly uneven. In the words of Plutarch: "Only a spark was needed to set everything on fire, and, since the whole state was rotten within itself, it was in the power of any bold man to overthrow it."

Unfortunately CatilinaÕs own statement of his point of view, has not survived, except in a few phrases. So with the exception of the hostile Sallust, we have to rely for our evidence upon the thundering, sparkling, totally one-sided vituperation of Cicero. The orator always believed that his suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy was not only the greatest thing that he himself had ever done but the greatest thing that had ever happened in Roman history. That was not true, and its reiteration became boring and ludicrous. It was true, however, that Cicero, for all his hesitant nature, had played the principal part in saving Rome from a real and nasty coup dÕ etat, though this is sometimes difficult to believe when he tells us so often how wonderful he was. Yet, at the time, his series of speeches carried the day (though the fourth speech may not have been so effective as the published version). For the conspiracy gave him a unique opportunity to deploy his incomparably persuasive eloquence in a field worthy of the central part which oratory played in ancient culture and Roman life.

1. Between his Second and Third Catilinarian speeches Cicero had to defend Murena on a charge of bribery brought by an unsuccessful candidate, the jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus.