Part I
In 63 BC, a bankrupt aristocrat called Catiline attempted (possibly) to overthrow the Roman Republic (maybe). After his plots were revealed, he fled Rome, raised a rebel army, and died in battle shortly thereafter. Cicero, the famous statesman, got most of the credit for stopping this; he had previously warned against Catiline's plots; although his rapid execution of many of Catiline's (supposed) co-conspirators led to him being exiled a few years later. Cicero got the 'smoking gun' he needed on October 20, when letters were delivered to his house, supposedly written by Catiline, in which the plotter urged various prominent Romans to leave town rather quickly for the sake of their health.
As might be expected, finding out exactly what happened in a shadowy plot 2000 years ago is almost impossible. Catiline never left his side of the story, Cicero had a vested interest in making the plot as hair-raising as possible and undoubtedly employed dirty tricks of his own, and exactly who was involved, and to what degree, is somewhat obscure. (Crassus and Caesar both, for instance, were suspected of knowing rather more than they let on).
But, with that in mind, I started to wonder - what if Catiline's mad gamble had actually paid off?
Part I: The City Falls
Lucius Catiline, scion of a noble family, had great vigour both of mind and body, but an evil and depraved nature. From youth up he revelled in civil wars, murder, pillage, and political dissension, and amid these he spent his early manhood. His body could endure hunger, cold and want of sleep to an incredible degree; his mind was reckless, cunning, treacherous, capable of any form of pretence or concealment. Covetous of others' possessions, he was prodigal of his own; he was violent in his passions. He possessed a certain amount of eloquence, but little discretion. His disordered mind ever craved the monstrous, incredible, gigantic – Sallust; the Wars of Catiline
On the 28th of October, 63 BC, a man by the name of Lucius Sergius Catilina – a bankrupt aristocrat hailing from one of the oldest families in the Republic, recent champion of the poor, and accused murderer – appeared in the Roman Forum.
Striding up to the Rostra – that platform, decorated with the prows of ships captured almost three centuries ago, that served as perhaps the central point of Roman public affairs – he was escorted, so Cicero tells us, by well over three hundred men.
Many, no doubt, deserved Cicero’s description of them as ‘hirelings, criminals, cut-throats, bandits, gladiators, slaves of the lowest sort’ – but others almost certainly did not. For with him marched scions of some of the oldest and most important families in Rome. True, many were on the margins of respectability - Publius Autronius Paetus, for example, had been elected to the highest office in the Republic, the Consulship, before his bribes, obscene even by the standards of the time, had served to void his election; whilst Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, Catiline's right hand man, had managed to get himself expelled from the Senate for ‘immorality’. But others were quite respectable, albeit with careers that rarely measured up to their glory of their ancient names - Gaius Cornelius Cethegus and Lucius Bestia, for instance, both had had unimpressive, but unmarked, magistracies – indeed, Bestria had just been elected to the powerful office of Tribune, whilst Lucius Cassius Longinus was a former Praetor – albeit one whose climb up the Cursus Honorum was considered to have come to a grinding halt.
The stink of smoke was likely in Cataline’s nostrils; and the Forum would have been eerily quiet. Dawn was still breaking over the city, but even by that point, many citizens would have known something terrible had happened during the night. For, in a single, coordinated stroke, at least twelve houses, belonging to some of the most powerful and richest men in Rome, had been broken into that night. Their inhabitants had been put to the sword, their women – so Sallust informs us– raped, before joining their menfolk. The screams and shouts, the tramp of groups of men sprinting through the streets, and the clash of steel would have been audible through the night.
The list of dead was extensive. Cato the Younger, a fiery, young, conservative Senator, was amongst them, as was Lucius Licinius Murena and Decimus Junius Silanus, the Consul-elects. Quintus Marcius Rex, a military leader who was awaiting his Triumph outside the city, was likewise killed, as was the Praetor Quintus Pompeius Rufus. Senior senators, magistrates, tribunes and Equites were all, reportedly, amongst the slaughtered. Some men, it was rumoured, had been slain by their own sons.
As Catalina approached the Rostra, according to Sallust, he saw Gaius Julius Caesar there – the young, aristocratic, debt-ridden, reckless and famously debauched newly elected Pontiff Maximus. Surrounded by his priests, Caesar had already, it seemed, understood the will of the Gods in this matter, and he had hurried to make sure other members of Rome’s priesthood understood it too. Certainly, the auguries, when they were taken just before Catalina’s speech, were reportedly beyond reproach; the Gods tracing no signs of coming disaster in the flights of birds or the feeding of chickens.
Forty five years old, Catiline would have cut an imposing figure as he mounted the Rostrum and began to speak. All sources agree on his leanness, his height, his hardness of body and his harsh, yet hypnotic, voice. One of the witnesses, a man named Marcus Terentius Varro who would later write the only at least slightly pro-Catiline history, On Cataline; described him as speaking clearly, confidently, without a trace of doubt, for well over an hour.
The Republic, Catiline claimed, had been stolen. Money lenders and greedy aristocrats, clever lawyers and corrupt magistrates, had conspired together, to steal the birth right of every Roman citizen. Their land had been taken from them, they had been cast into debt, they were forced to grovel at the feet of their equals for scraps from the table. Even men of the oldest and noblest blood, he said, had been brought low by the machinations of this shadowy cabal. Just as had happened during the old days of Tarquin the Proud, the Roman people had been the subjects of tyrants. And, just as had happened centuries ago, eventually the patience of the Roman people had snapped. New liberators had arisen, led by the new Brutus – Catiline. In a single night, so he said, the tyrants had been killed, liberty restored, and the glory of Rome regained.
So, at any rate, Catiline was pleased to claim. And with gangs of armed men prowling the city, the burnt out shells of what had been the homes of some of the greatest men in the Republic still smouldering, and the memories of last night’s screams still fresh, it is unlikely that anyone was in the mood to publicly dispute him, no matter how vague, or vaunting, his claims.
But as he spoke, was he as self assured as he appeared to be? Did he honestly believe that, in a single night, he had made him and his cohorts the undisputed masters of Rome? Or, buried beneath his undeniable bravery, his recklessness and his almost obscene sense of his own superiority, feel a kernel of fear?
For not all his enemies had been killed. One, in particular, had escaped the fate planned for him, and was already far outside the city walls, heading towards the relative safety of his hometown of Arpinium. Marcus Tullius Cicero – rightful Consul, famed orator and possessed of an ego almost as enormous as Catiline's, a man who had repeatedly accused Catiline of plotting against the state – had survived.
As might be expected, finding out exactly what happened in a shadowy plot 2000 years ago is almost impossible. Catiline never left his side of the story, Cicero had a vested interest in making the plot as hair-raising as possible and undoubtedly employed dirty tricks of his own, and exactly who was involved, and to what degree, is somewhat obscure. (Crassus and Caesar both, for instance, were suspected of knowing rather more than they let on).
But, with that in mind, I started to wonder - what if Catiline's mad gamble had actually paid off?
Part I: The City Falls
Lucius Catiline, scion of a noble family, had great vigour both of mind and body, but an evil and depraved nature. From youth up he revelled in civil wars, murder, pillage, and political dissension, and amid these he spent his early manhood. His body could endure hunger, cold and want of sleep to an incredible degree; his mind was reckless, cunning, treacherous, capable of any form of pretence or concealment. Covetous of others' possessions, he was prodigal of his own; he was violent in his passions. He possessed a certain amount of eloquence, but little discretion. His disordered mind ever craved the monstrous, incredible, gigantic – Sallust; the Wars of Catiline
On the 28th of October, 63 BC, a man by the name of Lucius Sergius Catilina – a bankrupt aristocrat hailing from one of the oldest families in the Republic, recent champion of the poor, and accused murderer – appeared in the Roman Forum.
Striding up to the Rostra – that platform, decorated with the prows of ships captured almost three centuries ago, that served as perhaps the central point of Roman public affairs – he was escorted, so Cicero tells us, by well over three hundred men.
Many, no doubt, deserved Cicero’s description of them as ‘hirelings, criminals, cut-throats, bandits, gladiators, slaves of the lowest sort’ – but others almost certainly did not. For with him marched scions of some of the oldest and most important families in Rome. True, many were on the margins of respectability - Publius Autronius Paetus, for example, had been elected to the highest office in the Republic, the Consulship, before his bribes, obscene even by the standards of the time, had served to void his election; whilst Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, Catiline's right hand man, had managed to get himself expelled from the Senate for ‘immorality’. But others were quite respectable, albeit with careers that rarely measured up to their glory of their ancient names - Gaius Cornelius Cethegus and Lucius Bestia, for instance, both had had unimpressive, but unmarked, magistracies – indeed, Bestria had just been elected to the powerful office of Tribune, whilst Lucius Cassius Longinus was a former Praetor – albeit one whose climb up the Cursus Honorum was considered to have come to a grinding halt.
The stink of smoke was likely in Cataline’s nostrils; and the Forum would have been eerily quiet. Dawn was still breaking over the city, but even by that point, many citizens would have known something terrible had happened during the night. For, in a single, coordinated stroke, at least twelve houses, belonging to some of the most powerful and richest men in Rome, had been broken into that night. Their inhabitants had been put to the sword, their women – so Sallust informs us– raped, before joining their menfolk. The screams and shouts, the tramp of groups of men sprinting through the streets, and the clash of steel would have been audible through the night.
The list of dead was extensive. Cato the Younger, a fiery, young, conservative Senator, was amongst them, as was Lucius Licinius Murena and Decimus Junius Silanus, the Consul-elects. Quintus Marcius Rex, a military leader who was awaiting his Triumph outside the city, was likewise killed, as was the Praetor Quintus Pompeius Rufus. Senior senators, magistrates, tribunes and Equites were all, reportedly, amongst the slaughtered. Some men, it was rumoured, had been slain by their own sons.
As Catalina approached the Rostra, according to Sallust, he saw Gaius Julius Caesar there – the young, aristocratic, debt-ridden, reckless and famously debauched newly elected Pontiff Maximus. Surrounded by his priests, Caesar had already, it seemed, understood the will of the Gods in this matter, and he had hurried to make sure other members of Rome’s priesthood understood it too. Certainly, the auguries, when they were taken just before Catalina’s speech, were reportedly beyond reproach; the Gods tracing no signs of coming disaster in the flights of birds or the feeding of chickens.
Forty five years old, Catiline would have cut an imposing figure as he mounted the Rostrum and began to speak. All sources agree on his leanness, his height, his hardness of body and his harsh, yet hypnotic, voice. One of the witnesses, a man named Marcus Terentius Varro who would later write the only at least slightly pro-Catiline history, On Cataline; described him as speaking clearly, confidently, without a trace of doubt, for well over an hour.
The Republic, Catiline claimed, had been stolen. Money lenders and greedy aristocrats, clever lawyers and corrupt magistrates, had conspired together, to steal the birth right of every Roman citizen. Their land had been taken from them, they had been cast into debt, they were forced to grovel at the feet of their equals for scraps from the table. Even men of the oldest and noblest blood, he said, had been brought low by the machinations of this shadowy cabal. Just as had happened during the old days of Tarquin the Proud, the Roman people had been the subjects of tyrants. And, just as had happened centuries ago, eventually the patience of the Roman people had snapped. New liberators had arisen, led by the new Brutus – Catiline. In a single night, so he said, the tyrants had been killed, liberty restored, and the glory of Rome regained.
So, at any rate, Catiline was pleased to claim. And with gangs of armed men prowling the city, the burnt out shells of what had been the homes of some of the greatest men in the Republic still smouldering, and the memories of last night’s screams still fresh, it is unlikely that anyone was in the mood to publicly dispute him, no matter how vague, or vaunting, his claims.
But as he spoke, was he as self assured as he appeared to be? Did he honestly believe that, in a single night, he had made him and his cohorts the undisputed masters of Rome? Or, buried beneath his undeniable bravery, his recklessness and his almost obscene sense of his own superiority, feel a kernel of fear?
For not all his enemies had been killed. One, in particular, had escaped the fate planned for him, and was already far outside the city walls, heading towards the relative safety of his hometown of Arpinium. Marcus Tullius Cicero – rightful Consul, famed orator and possessed of an ego almost as enormous as Catiline's, a man who had repeatedly accused Catiline of plotting against the state – had survived.
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