Martinus Padueius
Banned
Curio was pretty tight with Caesar, right? At least during the civil war, not sure at this stage. Could this be a part of Caesar's machinations?
Hats off to Curio here for being one clever SOB- Catiline's own paramilitaries and militias has been nearly destroyed and until the Catilinians get a real chance to nurse their wounds and are spared another campaign season (extremely unlikely this side of the decade) then Curio's legions are Catiline's military power with the only counterweight being the private retinues of the Cassian aristocrats so desperate for a return to normalcy and the political climate Curio once bleed for under their physical incarnation in Murena ...
will this be the normalization of the Catiline phenomena, where the mobs have their day but the "moderates" stage a soft self-coup and quiet things back down into something vaguely similar to the pre-war Senatorial nobility?
Curio was pretty tight with Caesar, right? At least during the civil war, not sure at this stage. Could this be a part of Caesar's machinations?
This sounds like just the scenario to get some hot-blooded Roman aristo to go grab a legion and change and raise (and raze) the country themselves. This is likely disastrously ill-informed and unplanned and generally a massive gamble, but sheer reckless bravery counts for a lot more then our modern attitudes would appreciate and hey if the Gods smiled on Catiline for doing the same...
That is indeed true - but Murena has already tried that, and most armed forces in Italy are now under the control of Scipio or Catiline.
Of course some hothead within Scipio's army gathering a couple of thousand men and trying something stupid is not unlikely...
*The fervently nodding, manically grinning Jack Nicholson meme, but it's Clodius.*
"Pompey's dictatorship would at least be competent, unlike Scipio's"
OOOOOHH BURNNNN! Great update, thank you for your work.
Thank you very much, I'm glad you are enjoying it!This is an amazing TL, I'm a huge fan of both Cicero and the late Republican Roman period, so this is ticking a lot of boxes for me at the moment. Can't wait for more!
Nice to see Crassus is following the Evil Overlord List and has a secure escape hatch, but there's still some like cosmic poetic justice crying out for Crassus to arrive in his private fiefdom only to have all his silver tribute paid to him in the form of a molten hot "crown" poured over his head,
Am I in the minority and cheering for Crassus? Sure, he was a selfish bastard, but he was a largely competent selfish bastard (leaving aside that little issue in the East ). I've always wondered what influence a longer-lived Crassus might have on Rome, and doubly so what might happen if his son Publius Licinius Crassus lives.
I also admit to being insanely curious about Caesar's actions and fate here. He's tied to the conspiracy but has so far been quiet, but I can't see that man being quiet for too long!
Though this is still a strong win for Crassus and (to a very lesser extent) the revolutionaries generally, I wonder how this must galvanize the Senate at Neapolis. I mean what Roman could forget Sertorius and his little Anti-Senate in Hispania? Now that the Catilineans are spreading their tendrils deep into the very machinery of Rome's empire, and with enough silver to buy the gods themselves, soon the rebels can corrupt the other provinces and compel the Senatorial cause to utter defeat, and even in the best case miraculous victory it would take years to root out of their new provincial sanctuaries. This is now something that cannot be contained and ended within Italy and the Roman aristocracy like the Social War, this is now a world war across the Mediterranean like the bad old days of Marius and Sulla... unless Scipio and the Neapolis legions take their last eleventh hour chance to do something. I mean even the previous Pompey loyalists have to be worried now that instead of cultivating the great general as the Senate's enforcer, these events would make Pompey's imminent arrival that of a new strongman taking from the subordinated Senate what he needed and enforcing Pompey's will only. The only way to avoid having to engage with that possibility and the thorny problem of keeping Pompey close-but-not-too-close would be to remove that temptation for Pompey and present him with a fiat accompli and bargaining position over the post-war future instead of the war itself. If there's anything at all that could ever unite the senatorial notables, it would be opposition putting their lives in the hands of new non-Senatorial authorities like Pompey, and the many, many Catiline mimics that are soon to follow. Of course once they decide they should do something, then they have to agree on how they should do it...