Issues in Catiline: Rebel of the Roman Republic (Part 2 of 4)

Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2023
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By James T. Carney

The second issue that my book, Catiline: Rebel of the Roman Republic, addresses is what caused the Catilinarian conspiracy to fail. The book tells the stories of the almost comical mishaps that led to the failure of the conspiracy:

• the betrayal by Q. Curius,
• the swift action by the Roman senate to utilize the military forces available to it to squelch the conspirators’ efforts in various parts of Italy before their actions could prompt local insurgencies,
• and the incredible blunder of Lentulus in entrusting the secrets of the conspirators to the Gauls.

    The essential conclusion that readers will reach is that any conspiracy has little real chance of success, in part because of the undependable nature of those who join it. The conspiracy did not represent a cooly calculated plan to overthrow the Republic; it was rather a last desperate throw of the dice by a man who had declared in his final campaign for the consulship: “If a fire is kindled against me, I will extinguish it not with water but with general ruin.”

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus

    Even if the conspiracy had succeeded, the conspirators would have needed to deal with Pompey the Great, who, having brought to successful conclusions the war against the Pirates and the last war with Mithridates, was returning to Italy with what would have been an invincible army. As Sallust points out with an obvious reference to Pompey:

Nor would those who obtained victory be permitted to enjoy it for long, since tired and defenseless, another who possessed more strength would take away both power and freedom from them.

17th century illustration of Dio

The third issue the book addresses is the significance of the conspiracy. Dio Cassius contends that Catiline “acquired a greater name than his deeds deserved owing to the reputation of Cicero and the speeches he delivered against him.” 

    There is certainly some truth to Dio’s contention. Classical education in the early Roman Empire was focused on Cicero’s works, which were considered models for great oratory and perhaps even more for writing style. Indeed, part of Cicero’s motivation for publishing his speeches was his hope that they would be used in the classroom and thus ensure his immortality. 

Quintilian’s statue in
Calahorra, La Rioja, Spain

    Cicero’s First Catilinarian, which is still taught in schools today, was his greatest oration. Quintilian, in his seminal Institutio Oratoria, claimed that Cicero was the greatest Roman orator and used Cicero’s Pro Milone as a model for teaching oratory. The great prose writers of the early Empire – Seneca the Younger, Tacitus, and Pliny – were greatly influenced by the Ciceronian tradition, although they attempted with some success to move beyond Cicero’s style and approach.
    Dio Cassius, however, failed to recognize that Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae may have played even a greater role than Cicero’s orations in the attention given to Catiline and the conspiracy by later generations. Sallust was a far greater writer than a historian. His defects as a historian stemmed from his emphasis on his unique and compelling style as well as his view of history as teaching philosophy by example. 

    Sallust’s essential theme – that the Roman nobility was responsible for the decline and fall of the Roman Republic – led him to tell Catiline’s story as a version of Milton’s Paradise Lost with Catiline playing the role of Lucifer. While his account distorts facts in order to emphasize his basic theme, it contains many candid insights on the failings of the Roman Republic.

Juvenal, S. H. Gimber, 1837

Catiline has been the subject of so much attention from the arts, letters, and history over two thousand years that my book devotes an entire chapter to the impact of Catiline’s ghost in those areas. Indeed, my book’s cover is graced by a portion of the famous Palazzo Madama picture showing Cicero’s deliverance of his First Catilinarian to an enthralled senate with a dejected Catiline sitting in isolation, his head hanging.
    There have been two operas about Catiline. Virgil describes Catiline’s fate in the Aeneid: “hanging from a rock in hell and trembling at the menacing Furies.” Juvenal does his bit to Catiline’s reputation in one of his Satires. 

    Catiline has been the subject of a number of plays by famous authors such as Ben Jonson, Voltaire, and Henrik Ibsen, although he did not benefit from their best efforts. Unfortunately, Shakespeare missed him, but Macbeth deals with a similar soul. The famous description of Macbeth – “Some say he is mad, others that lesser hate him, do call it valiant fury” – would apply equally to Catiline.

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.