Catĕnes, a Persian by whose means Bessus was seized. Curtius, bk. 7, ch. 43.
Cathæa, a country of India.
Cathări, certain gods of the Arcadians.——An Indian nation, where the wives accompany their husbands to the burning pile, and are burnt with them. Diodorus, bk. 17.
Catia, an immodest woman, mentioned Horace, bk. 1, satire 2, li. 95.
Catiēna, a courtesan in Juvenal’s age. Juvenal, satire 3, li. 133.
Catiēnus, an actor at Rome in Horace’s age, bk. 2, satire 3, li. 61.
Lucius Sergius Cătĭlīna, a celebrated Roman, descended of a noble family. When he had squandered away his fortune by his debaucheries and extravagance, and been refused the consulship, he secretly meditated the ruin of his country, and conspired with many of the most illustrious of the Romans, as dissolute as himself, to extirpate the senate, plunder the treasury, and set Rome on fire. This conspiracy was timely discovered by the consul Cicero, whom he had resolved to murder; and Catiline, after he had declared his intentions in the full senate, and attempted to vindicate himself, on seeing five of his accomplices arrested, retired to Gaul, where his partisans were assembling an army; while Cicero at Rome punished the condemned conspirators. Petreius, the other consul’s lieutenant, attacked Catiline’s ill-disciplined troops, and routed them. Catiline was killed in the engagement, bravely fighting, about the middle of December, B.C. 63. His character has been deservedly branded with the foulest infamy; and to the violence he offered to a vestal, he added the more atrocious murder of his own brother, for which he would have suffered death, had not friends and bribes prevailed over justice. It has been reported that Catiline and the other conspirators drank human blood, to make their oaths more firm and inviolable. Sallust has written an account of the conspiracy. Cicero, Against Catiline.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 8, li. 668.
Catilli, a people near the river Anio. Silius Italicus, bk. 4, li. 225.
Catilius, a pirate of Dalmatia. Cicero, Letters to his Friends, bk. 5, ch. 10.
Catillus, or Catilus, a son of Amphiaraus, who came to Italy with his brothers Coras and Tiburtus, where he built Tibur, and assisted Turnus against Æneas. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 7, li. 672.—Horace, bk. 1, ode 18, li. 2.