Excerpt from The Conspiracy of Catiline as Related by Sallust: Allen and Greenough

Vdown to that of Julius Caesar; and, in point of time, was almost exactly halfway between the two. Lit was not what the name generally means - a conspiracy to over throw the existing government. It was a scheme, on the part of a few needy and desperate politicians, to get them selves elected in regular form, and then to carry on the government to their own advantage. 1 Apart from the char acter of the men who engaged in it, it does not seem to have been any more criminal in its origin or plans than any ring or cabal by which a personal interest seeks its ends through the forms of constitutional election. Only when, after three years' attempt, it was finally defeated at the polls, and appealed to armed insurrec tion, did it take the shape of treason. And even then it kept the formalities of civil and military authority, and rejected the help of slaves, claiming that its real object was to rid the state of an oppressive and selfish oligarchy. That its real aim was to destroy the state - which Cicero asserts - was, at any rate, so well disguised that the party which succeeded in overcoming it fell into odium as enemies of the people, and found their own ruin in its defeat. These circumstances have made the true character and aims of the conspiracy one of the riddles of Roman poli tics. Cicero, in a well-known passage (cat. Ranges the conspirators in five dangerous classes, of which the most respectable were men of large estates heavily mortgaged, whose debts made them ready to welcome any sort of change. But they, as he shows, could have no real interest in a revolution. Land it may be safe, perhaps, along with many critics, to dismiss the stories of bloody rites, criminal oaths, and desperate designs of massacre and conflagration, as the tales of frightened fancy and political hatel But of the reckless and criminalcharacter of its leaders, and the mischief they would have done if they had got into office, there seems no reason for doubt. [as candidate, Cicero had beaten them fairly in a hard-fought battle at the polls. As consul, he had worked, actively and effectually, to block their further political game.' When they were finally defeated, in the fall elections of his consular year, and lost heart to try again, he was vigilant, shrewd, intrepid, and; successful, in tracking their schemes of open violence, and forcing the development of their plot beyond the walls. His colleague Antonius - whom, half by bribery and half by flattery or threats, he had turned against them - was com pelled, with whatever reluctance, to take the field to fight them; and, though conveniently lame on the day of battle, had forced upon him the military glory of their defeat. The conspiracy proper was quite annihilated by this blow. No avowed leader or accomplice in it seems to have been left in Rome. And it was not till the coalition of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, three years later, gave new hope to the enemies of the senate, and Clodine succeeded Catiline as the leader of what was most ferocious and desperate in Rome, that Cicero met the penalty of his great political error, the illegal death of the conspirators.

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