SALLUST
The Conspiracy of Catiline
The Roman historian Caius Crispus Sallust, who was born at Amiternum in 86 B.C., and died in 34 B.C., lived throughout the active career of Julius Cæsar, and died while Anthony and Octavian were still rivals for the supreme power. It might be supposed from his works that he was a person of eminent virtue, but this was merely a literary pose. He was probably driven into private life, in the first place, on account of the scandals with which he was associated. He became a partisan of Cæsar in the struggle with Pompey, and to this he owed the pro-consulship of Numidia, on the proceeds of which he retired into leisured ease. Sallust aspired with very limited success to assume the mantle of Thucydides, and the rôle of a philosophic historian. He displays considerable political acumen on occasion, but his assumption of stern impartiality is hardly less a pose than his pretense of elevated morality. His "Conspiracy of Catiline"--the first of his historical essays--was probably written, in part at least, with the object of dissociating Cæsar from it; the lurid colors in which he paints the conspirator are probably exaggerated. But whether true or false, the picture presented is a vivid one. This epitome is adapted specially from the Latin text.
I.--The Plotting
I esteem the intellectual above the physical qualities of man; and the task of the historian has attracted me because it taxes the writer's abilities to the utmost Personal ambition had at first drawn me into public life, but the political atmosphere, full of degradation and corruption, was so uncongenial that I resolved to retire and devote myself to the production of a series of historical studies, for which I felt myself to be the better fitted by my freedom from the influences which bias the political partisan. For the first of these studies I have selected the conspiracy of Catiline.
Lucius Catilina [commonly called Catiline] was of high birth, richly endowed both in mind and body, but of extreme depravity; with extraordinary powers of endurance, reckless, crafty, and versatile, a master in the arts of deception, at once grasping and lavish, unbridled in his passions, ready of speech, but with little true insight Of insatiable and inordinate ambitions, he was possessed, after Sulla's supremacy, with a craving to grasp the control of the state, utterly careless of the means, so the end were attained. Naturally headstrong, he was urged forward by his want of money, the consciousness of his crimes, and the degradation of morals in a society where luxury and greed ruled side by side.
The wildest, the most reckless, the most prodigal, the most criminal, were readily drawn into the circle of Catiline's associates; in such a circle those who were not already utterly depraved very soon became so under the sinister and seductive influence of their leader. This man, who in the pursuit of his own vices had done his own son to death, did not hesitate to encourage his pupils in every species of crime; and with such allies, and the aid of the disbanded Sullan soldiery swarming in Italy, he dreamed of subverting the Roman state while her armies, under Gnæus Pompeius, were far away.
The first step was to secure his own election as consul. One plot of his had already failed, because Catiline himself had attempted to move prematurely; but the conspirators remained scatheless. Those who were now with Catiline included members of the oldest families and of equestrian rank. Crassus himself was suspected of complicity, owing to his rivalry with Pompeius. The assembled conspirators were addressed by Catiline in a speech of the most virulent character. He urged these social outcasts to rise against a bloated plutocracy battening on the ill-gotten wealth to which his audience had just as good a title. He promised the cancellation of all debts, the proscription of the wealthy, and the general application of the rule of "the spoils to the victors." He had friends at the head of the armies in Spain and Mauritania, if Gaius Antonius were the other successful candidate for the consulship, his co-operation, too, could be secured. Such was the purport of his speech; but I do not credit the popular fiction that the conspirators were solemnly pledged in a bowl of mingled wine and blood.
Rumours of the plot, however, began to leak out through a certain Fulvia, mistress of Quintus Curio, a man who had been expelled from the senatorial body on account of his iniquities; and this probably caused many of the nobility to support, for the consulship, Cicero, whom, as a "new man," they would otherwise have religiously opposed. The result was that Catiline's candidature failed, and Cicero was elected with Gaius Antonius for his colleague.
At length Cicero, seeing that the ferment was everywhere increasing to an extent with which the ordinary law could not cope, obtained from the senate the exceptional powers for dealing with a national emergency which they had constitutional authority to grant. Thus, when news came that a Catilinarian, Gaius Manlius, had risen in Etruria at the head of an armed force, prompt administrative measures were taken to dispatch adequate military forces to various parts of the country. Catiline himself had taken no overt action; he now presented himself in the senate, was openly assailed by Cicero, responded with insults which were interrupted by cries of indignation, and flung from the house with the words "Since I am beset by enemies and driven out, the fire you have kindled about me shall be crushed out by the ruin of yourselves."