by Cicero
Shortly before the election was due to take place, Catiline gave an inflammatory address at his house, recommending himself as someone who was prepared to go to any lengths on behalf of the poor and desperate, among whom he included himself. He is represented in the sources as having depended for his support on three groups of people: those of all levels of society who were suffering as a result of debt; Sullan veterans who had been rewarded with land but had fallen on hard times; and people who had been dispossessed in Sulla’s confiscations (the first group obviously overlapped to some extent with the other two). The fact that he rallied his supporters under a silver eagle used by Marius in the war against the Cimbri (see Cat. 1.24, 2.13; Sal. Cat. 59.3) would suggest that he appealed more to the third group, dispossessed Marians, than to the second: Cicero would then have exaggerated, in order to increase Catiline’s unpopularity, the extent to which he relied on Sullan veterans (a group with whom few probably had much sympathy). But on the other hand, Catiline’s ally Manlius was a Sullan veteran; so there must have been at least an element of the second group among his following. (See further W. V. Harris, Rome in Etruria and Umbria (Oxford, 1971), 289–94.)
The difficulties faced by these groups were considerable. Italian agriculture was still suffering as a result of Sulla’s civil war, confiscations, and settlements (82–81), and as a result of Spartacus’ revolt (73–71). Up and down Italy, the men who had had their land taken away by Sulla and the men to whom he had given it lived in close proximity: there must have been a great deal of localized violence and unrest. Moreover, during the previous decade the Third Mithridatic War (73–63) and the pirates (to 67) had prevented Roman financiers lending money abroad, and they had instead lent it in Italy. But with Pompey’s defeat of Mithridates in 63 and his settlement of the eastern provinces, there was a rush to lend money overseas. (The situation became so serious that the senate this year banned the export of gold and silver from Rome; Cicero took steps to enforce the ban.) At home, creditors immediately called in their loans. This spelled ruin for the urban plebs and for heavily indebted members of the upper class alike. To many, their only hope appeared to be a one-off cancellation of debts (novae tabulae): at the end of his life, in 44, Cicero was to remark that pressure for this had never been greater than in his consulship (Off. 2.84). For the upper class, unprecedented political and social competition caused by Sulla’s rigid ‘sequence of offices’ (cursus honorum), with its ever decreasing number of positions available at each stage in a senator’s career, had led to an explosion of bribery and indebtedness. Aediles, for instance, were required to put on games at their own expense: the games would need to be more spendid than the previous ones if the magistrate were to rise higher, but even so he would have no guarantee that he would ever gain the provincial governorship which would allow him to recoup his outlay. After Caesar gave his aedilician games in 65 he was allegedly in debt for 25 million sesterces; the sum was not paid off until he had conquered Gaul. (See further Z. Yavetz, Historia, 12 (1963), 485–99; and on debt in this period, M. W. Frederiksen, JRS 56 (1966), 128–41.)
Prior to his last attempt at the consulship, Catiline appears to have shown no interest in addressing Rome’s social problems; but the plight of so many of his contemporaries now presented him with an opportunity. During his campaign he was escorted by a large group of supporters from Arretium and Faesulae in northern Etruria, one of the areas that had suffered most from Sulla’s confiscations and settlements. This group, led by Gaius Manlius, a former Sullan centurion, consisted mainly of discontented Sullan colonists, but also included a number of the dispossessed. (That is what Cicero says at Mur. 49; but it is possible, as we have seen, that the Sullan colonists were in fact in the minority. Manlius’ presence in Rome is attested by Plutarch (Cic. 14.2).) To these men and his other supporters, Catiline offered the policy they longed for—cancellation of debts. It was precisely the policy to win him the support of the desperate from all ranks of society—and one that no respectable politician was prepared to offer.
Once the content of Catiline’s election address at his house had been reported to Cicero, Cicero persuaded the senate to postpone the elections in order that they could discuss the speech Catiline had made. So the senate met, and Catiline, called upon to justify himself, far from denying what he had said, made another speech in the same vein. To Cicero’s dismay, the senate then declined to take any effective action, and the election therefore went ahead without further delay (there is no good reason for thinking it was postponed until October). Catiline attended with a gang of armed men. Cicero, who was presiding, came with a bodyguard, and ostentatiously wore a large cuirass. He did this partly to register his disagreement with the senate about the nature of the threat posed by Catiline, and partly to bring home to the people the danger that Catiline represented. The voting took place, and Silanus and Murena, the two plebeians, were elected. Sulpicius and Cato then launched a prosecution of Murena under the lex Tullia for electoral malpractice.
Despairing of gaining power by conventional means, Catiline now started his conspiracy. He could have chosen instead to wait for Murena’s conviction and then stand against Sulpicius at the supplementary election which would follow: he did not this time face the difficulty he had faced in 65 of not having been a candidate in the original election. But he had evidently run out of patience, hope, and cash.
We know little of what happened in August and September. In September the senate seems to have discussed Catiline’s conspiracy (on the rather dubious evidence of Suetonius, who says that they were discussing it on the day when the future emperor Augustus was born); but there was as yet no hard evidence against him. On the night of 19 (or perhaps 18) October, however, Crassus came to Cicero’s house at midnight, accompanied by Marcus Claudius Marcellus (the future consul of 51 and subject of Cicero’s Pro Marcello) and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica (the future consul of 52), and handed him a set of letters that had been delivered to his house. Crassus had opened only the one addressed to himself: it was anonymous, and warned him of an impending massacre by Catiline and advised him to leave Rome in secret. The next morning Cicero convened the senate and had the rest of the letters read aloud by their addressees (we are not told who they were); all the letters carried the same message as the letter to Crassus. After this, on 20 October (and therefore either at this same meeting of the senate or at another a day later), Quintus Arrius, an ex-praetor, reported that news had come from Faesulae that Manlius was preparing an armed rising. The senate therefore passed the emergency decree (senatus consultum ultimum or ‘SCU’), first used against Gaius Gracchus in 121 BC, urging the consuls to take whatever action they considered necessary for the security of the state (the date of the SCU, usually given as 21 October, but given here as 20 October, is very uncertain: it was either eighteen or seventeen days before the date of the First Catilinarian, which is itself uncertain).
A week later (27 October), Manlius, having heard of the passing of the SCU, was in open rebellion. Some modern scholars have suggested that his rising was in origin independent of Catiline. But there is no suggestion of this in the ancient sources (except an ironic rejection of the idea by Cicero at Cat. 2.14); and Manlius had supported Catiline during the election campaign. The deal between Manlius and Catiline seems to have been that Manlius would help Catiline achieve his ambition of being elected consul if Catiline would then redress his men’s grievances and give them relief from their debts. Once Catiline had decided, after the election, that he would continue to seek the consulship by other means, Manlius must have made a decision that it was in his best interest to continue the arrangement. (On Manlius’ connection with Catiline, see E. J. Phillips, Historia, 25 (1976), 443–4.)
Cicero now took a number of security measures, as he had been urged to do by the senate’s decree. He made arrangements for the defence of Rome, and also of Praeneste, which he believed the conspirators were planning to seize on I November. Early in November, news came from Faes
ulae that Manlius’ rebellion had begun, and there were reports of slave revolts at Capua and in Apulia. To meet these threats, two generals who were outside the city waiting to be awarded triumphs, Quintus Marcius Rex (the consul of 68) and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus (the consul of 69), were sent to Faesulae and Apulia respectively. In addition, two praetors, Quintus Pompeius Rufus and Metellus Celer, were sent respectively to Capua and Picenum. Rewards were offered to anyone who came forward with information about the conspiracy. No one did so.
All this time Catiline remained in Rome. There was as yet no real evidence to incriminate him: the letters sent to Crassus had been anonymous, and so proved nothing. Lucius Aemilius Paullus, however, gave notice that he intended to prosecute Catiline for violence. Catiline responded by offering to place himself in the custody first of Manius Aemilius Lepidus (the consul of 66), then of Cicero, then of Metellus Celer (who presumably had not yet left for Picenum), then of a Marcus Metellus (possibly the praetor of 69); but of these the first three refused to accept him, and the fourth presumably refused also, since Catiline remained a free man. The case never came to trial.
Quintus Marcius Rex, meanwhile, had arrived in Etruria. Manlius sent him a message stating his supporters’ grievances, to which Marcius replied that the men should lay down their arms and put their trust in the senate’s mercy. Understandably, they declined to take this advice. (It is interesting that Manlius should have attempted to make terms with Marcius: this would appear to show that his support for Catiline was merely the means to an end, and that Catiline’s consulship was in itself a matter of indifference to him.)
On the night of 6 November, Catiline held a secret meeting in Rome with his chief supporters at the house of one of them, the senator Marcus Porcius Laeca, in the scythe-makers’ quarter. Arrangements were made for Catiline himself to go to Manlius’ army, and for other conspirators to go and take charge of the risings elsewhere in Italy. Those who remained would organize assassinations and the firing of various parts of the city. (Cicero makes much of the Catilinarians’ alleged intention to burn Rome, and it was largely this claim which enabled him to turn the urban plebs against the conspiracy. It is incredible, however, that Catiline should have intended a general conflagration—though quite possible that he planned specific, localized fires, and was foolish enough to imagine that they would not spread.) Finally, two conspirators, Gaius Cornelius (an eques) and Lucius Vargunteius (a man who had been tried for electoral malpractice and probably expelled from the senate), would call on Cicero at his house early the next morning and assassinate him. (Antonius, of course, was Catiline’s ally of old, and the conspirators did not plan to kill him.)
Cicero was well provided throughout the conspiracy with spies and informers, and so he was usually one step ahead of Catiline. One of his informers was Fulvia, the mistress of one of the conspirators, Quintus Curius (an ex-senator, expelled in 70). She told him of the meeting at Laeca’s house and the plot to assassinate him, and so on the morning of 7 November Cornelius and Vargunteius found the consul’s house closed to callers and strongly defended.
Cicero immediately called a meeting of the senate, in the temple of Jupiter Stator. (Some modern accounts place this meeting a day later, on 8 November; but it seems most unlikely that Cicero would have waited a day. On 3 December he would have no trouble summoning the senate for an immediate meeting. For further discussion of this point, see second note on Cat. 1.1 below, pp. 302–3.) To the surprise of many, no doubt, Catiline attended; but no one would sit near him. Cicero then stood up and denounced him in his First Catilinarian (In Catilinam I)—a speech aptly described by Sallust (who is not on the whole particularly interested in Cicero) as ‘brilliant, and of service to the state’ (Cat. 31.6). (The scene is well imagined in a famous nineteenth-century fresco by Cesare Maccari in the Palazzo Madama in Rome.) At some point Catiline offered to go into voluntary exile, if the senate would pass a decree to that effect; but Cicero would have none of it. When Cicero had finished, Catiline bravely replied, protesting his innocence and pointing out that he was a patrician whereas Cicero (being from Arpinum) was a mere squatter—a thoroughly Roman line of argument. This defence was not well received, however, and Catiline rushed out of the temple. (This is Sallust’s version; Cicero was to claim in 46 BC that Catiline said nothing (Orat. 129).)
That night he slipped out of Rome—but without taking his followers with him. He left behind letters for several consulars in which he again protested his innocence, and claimed that he had left for exile in Massilia (Marseilles, the refuge of Verres) in order to spare his country a civil war. The road he took, the Via Aurelia, was indeed the road to Massilia, not the one to Faesulae. But on the other hand he had already sent ahead a military force and a consignment of arms to wait for him at Forum Aurelium on the Via Aurelia (Cat. 1.24, 2.13), and from there he would be able to cut across to the Via Cassia, and follow it (as in the event he did) through Arretium to Faesulae. In view of this, it is unrealistic to suppose that he had any intention of going into exile, whether permanently, or merely until Murena was convicted and a supplementary consular election announced. Instead, his choice of the Via Aurelia, and the letters he left behind, must have been intended to deceive public opinion, in order to minimize the chances of a force being sent after him.
However, he also sent a ‘very different letter’ (as Sallust says) to Catulus (the ex-consul who had helped him out at his adultery trial in 73). In this letter he stated that he had taken the action that he had taken (which was not spelt out, and could refer to either insurrection or exile) because he had been robbed of office, that he was following his normal custom of championing the oppressed, and that his financial situation was capable of recovery; and he asked Catulus to look after his wife, Aurelia Orestilla. This letter differed from the other ones that he sent in that this one did not unequivocally state that he had gone into exile; hence he cannot have decided firmly on that course of action. The letter is preserved in Sallust’s account (Cat. 35); it gives the impression of a man who is proud, impetuous, and doomed. Catulus read it out in the senate.
Next day, 8 November, Cicero addressed the people at a public meeting while the senate were being summoned: this speech is the Second Catilinarian (In Catilinam II). In it he informs the people of Catiline’s flight and describes the types of people who support the conspiracy—though taking care to exclude his audience themselves from his analysis (Sallust says that initially the entire plebs supported Catiline: see Cat. 37.1; 48.1).
A week or so later, news reached Rome that Catiline had arrived in Manlius’ camp. There could now be no further doubt as to his guilt. The senate declared him and Manlius public enemies; Antonius was given the command against them, and Cicero was to defend the city. An amnesty was offered to any of Catiline’s followers who surrendered before a certain date, but no one took up the offer.
It was at this point, in late November, that Sulpicius’ and Cato’s prosecution of Murena for electoral malpractice came to trial. To Sulpicius’ disappointment and annoyance, Cicero undertook the defence, along with Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, and Crassus. Cicero’s argument was that whether or not Murena had broken the lex Tullia—and he of course argued that he had not—Murena ought to be acquitted because of the threat from Catiline. He and Antonius were due to step down in a month’s time, and it was absolutely necessary that there should be another two consuls ready to take over from them. Moreover, Murena was a military man whereas Sulpicius was a jurist, and in the current emergency it was the soldier who was needed. This argument persuaded the jury and Murena was unanimously acquitted. Afterwards Cicero published his speech, Pro Murena, one of his most entertaining and brilliant defences.
Shortly after the trial was over, Cicero, by an extraordinary stroke of good fortune, was given the chance to acquire the evidence that he needed to prove the guilt of Catiline’s leading associates in the city. The Allobroges, a tribe from Narbonese Gaul who were suffering from exploitation and debt,
had sent envoys to Rome to put their case before the senate, but the senate had rejected their appeal. Shortly afterwards, the envoys were approached by a freedman called Publius Umbrenus, who was acting on the instructions of the most senior of Catiline’s followers, the patrician Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura—the former consul of 71, who had been expelled from the senate in 70 (along with Antonius and Curius), and was now praetor. Umbrenus told the envoys that if they supported the conspiracy, they would get what they wanted. They were then introduced to a conspirator of equestrian rank, Publius Gabinius Capito, and were told the names of others who were in the plot. After debating among themselves what to do, the envoys decided to report what they had learned to their tribe’s patron, Quintus Fabius Sanga (who was presumably the person who had put their case before the senate); and he went straight to Cicero. Seeing this as an opportunity to acquire incriminating evidence, and well aware of the propaganda value of the Catilinarians being caught conspiring with Rome’s traditional enemy, the Gauls, he told Fabius to direct the Allobroges to ask the ringleaders for written statements which they could show to their people. Three of the conspirators complied: Lentulus, a patrician senator Gaius Cornelius Cethegus, and another eques, Lucius Statilius. A fourth conspirator, Lucius Cassius Longinus, a praetor with Cicero in 66 and one of the unsuccessful candidates for the consulship of 63, suspected a trap and replied that since he was going to Gaul anyway he need not put anything in writing—then promptly left Rome. The plan that was agreed was that the envoys would leave Rome by the Mulvian Bridge, just outside Rome to the north (on the road leading to the Via Cassia); they would be escorted as far as Faesulae by Titus Volturcius, a native of Cortona in Etruria; and then, after a meeting with Catiline, they would complete their journey to Gaul on their own. In addition to the statements which the Gauls were to take with them, Volturcius would take a personal letter from Lentulus to be delivered to Catiline, saying that Catiline ought to enlist slaves—something that he had always refused to do, since his rising was not a slave revolt and it would be highly damaging to his cause if it were perceived as being one, or could be represented as one. (The purpose of this letter must have been to give Catiline a means of assuring himself that Volturcius was not a spy, since Volturcius had joined the conspiracy only after Catiline’s departure from Rome. One scholar has suspected that the letter was in fact a plant by Cicero; but Lentulus would later acknowledge in the senate that the handwriting was his.)
