Issues in Catiline: Rebel of the Roman Republic (Part 1 of 4)

Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2023
Click image to order the
book from Barnes & Noble

By James T. Carney

[Editor’s Note: Columnist James T. Carney was asked by the editor of his book (see cover at the side) to write about it for Ancient Origins Magazine. The Wikipedia entry for the Catiline of the title identifies Catiline as

Lucius Sergius Catilina (c. 108 BC – January 62 BC), known in English as Catiline. He was a Roman politician and soldier, best known for instigating the Catilinarian conspiracy, a failed attempt to violently seize control of the Roman state in 63 BC.

I agreed to edit the magazine write-up for Jim if he’d let me serialize it here for your enjoyment and erudition. I’m grateful to him for agreeing to that arrangement. Perhaps he’ll even give me an autographed copy of the book….]

Biographies record the lives of their subjects; they may deal with issues that confronted their subjects but essentially they are subject-orientated, not issue-orientated. Histories, on the other hand, are the opposite. They focus on issues although they may deal with the characters of historical personages insofar as they impact the issues. A prime example an issue-driven history is Edward Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which provides Gibbons’ explanation of that decline and fall.
    My book straddles the traditional dividing line between biography and history –for two reasons.

Detail of Catiline in Cesare Maccari’s
fresco in Palazzo Madama

• First, it is both a biography of Catiline and a history of the Catilinarian conspiracy.
• Second, and more important, the book focuses on the issue of Catiline’s character in an effort to resolve the difference between the classical picture of Catiline as the devil incarnate and the revisionist view of him as a liberal reformer.

Artistic impression
of Sallust

The classical picture of Catiline is drawn by Sallust, who writes that Catiline

born of a noble clan, was of great strength of mind and body, but possessed of an evil and depraved character. From his youth, he loved civil discord, murder, pillage and political dissension; and among these he spent his early manhood. His body could endure hunger, cold, and lack of sleep to a degree which was unbelievable; his mind was reckless, cunning, changeable, capable of any form of pretense or concealment. Covetous of the possessions of others, he was wasteful of his own. Violent in his passions, he possessed a great deal of eloquence but little wisdom. His disordered mind always desired the monstrous, the gigantic and the incredible. After the dictatorship of L. Sulla, he was seized by a great desire to take over the Republic, little reckoning the means by which he would achieve this goal as long as he attained power himself.

Depiction of the two brothers
made during the 19^th century
by Eugene Guillaume

    The revisionist liberal reformer view has been less eloquently expressed but generally portrays Catiline as being one of a long line of popularis reformers beginning with the Gracchi brothers and ending with Julius Caesar, who sought to protect the people from the ravages of a rich and selfish aristocracy. This picture is to a large extent the result of certain modern historians seeing the last century of the Roman Republic as dominated by a struggle between conservative optimates who sought to maintain the status quo and liberal reformers who believed that preservation of the Republic depended on reforms. This picture of Catiline as a 19th century British liberal seems to be supported by the following quotation in Sallust’s imaginary speech that Catiline gave to the conspirators:

For ever since the Republic has fallen into the power, control and governance of a few, it is always to them that the tribute of kings and tetrarchs are rendered, it is to them that taxes of nations and peoples are paid. All of us others, good and active men, noble or non-noble in descent, we are without influence or power, subject to those whom, if the Republic was strong, we would be able to terrify. And so all influence, power, office and wealth are found among those men or those to whom they wish to bestow such things. To us are left dangers, defeats, prosecutions and poverty.

    A deeper analysis of this “speech” as well as an examination of the audience – mainly a group of relatively unsuccessful politicians – indicates that Catiline is not appealing to the poor and oppressed but rather to the political “outs” who were members of the elite. Even Catiline’s espousal of debt reform – that is, allowing payment of debts in debased currency (or, in economic terms, a partial elimination of debt) – was addressed to the indebted aristocrats. The truly poor were unlikely to incur much in the way of debt, because creditors then, like creditors now, tended to lend money only to those who possessed sufficient resources to repay them.
    My book paints a nuanced portrait of Catiline as neither a devil nor a liberal saint. Catiline was in many ways a most traditional Roman. His earliest associates were members of the governing oligarchy; his best friend, Q. Lutatius Catulus, was one of the leaders of the conservative faction in the senate. His advocacy of debt reform was not a revolutionary idea but rather a traditional Roman approach to alleviating the burdens of the debtors.

First-century AD
bust of Cicero

    Catiline did not take up arms to lead a social revolution. Rather, he tried to seize by force that which he believed had been unfairly denied to him by the chicanery of Cicero. Had he succeeded in his second campaign for consul or in his efforts to seize control of the Republic, he would have advanced the debasement of the currency and some kind of agrarian reform, but nothing more.
    Catiline was driven by pride and ambition, not social philosophy. He could not accept defeat. Catiline was remarkable in terms of his charisma, ambition, and force of will, but not in terms of social thinking or ideology.

Copyright © 2023 by James T. Carney James T. Carney is a student of history who likes to visit its monuments and museums and report on them with a critical eye and some humor. Attorney-at-law and long-time resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.