First Catilinarian Conspiracy
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The so-called first Catilinarian conspiracy was an almost certainly fictitious conspiracy which – according to various ancient tellings – involved
Publius Autronius Paetus Publius Autronius Paetus was a politician of the late Roman Republic who was involved in the conspiracy of Catiline. He was elected consul in 66 BC (to serve in 65 BC), alongside Publius Cornelius Sulla, but before they could take office both were ...
,
Publius Cornelius Sulla Publius Cornelius Sulla (died 45 BC) was a politician of the late Roman Republic and the nephew of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. He was also a brother-in-law of Pompey, having married his sister Pompeia. Early life Publius Cornelius Sulla was the son ...
, Lucius Sergius Catalina, and others. Ancient accounts of the alleged conspiracy differ in the participants; in some tellings, Catiline is nowhere mentioned. Autronius and Sulla had been elected consuls for 65 BC but were removed after convictions for bribery. New consuls were then elected. The supposed goal of the conspiracy was to murder the second set of consuls elected for 65 BC and, in their resulting absence, replace them. Almost all modern historians believe the conspiracy is fictitious and dismiss claims thereof as merely slanderous political rumours. The core of the legend, a plot by the two consuls-elect for 65 BC to kill and usurp the consuls, is dismissed as inconceivable. The participation of others, such as Catiline, is rejected as inconsistent with their immediately following political actions; most claims of participation are believed to be discrediting retrojections introduced in the aftermath of the real Catilinarian conspiracy in 63 BC.


Ancient accounts

The inciting incident for the conspiracy was the election of two consuls-designate for 65 BC,
Publius Autronius Paetus Publius Autronius Paetus was a politician of the late Roman Republic who was involved in the conspiracy of Catiline. He was elected consul in 66 BC (to serve in 65 BC), alongside Publius Cornelius Sulla, but before they could take office both were ...
and
Publius Cornelius Sulla Publius Cornelius Sulla (died 45 BC) was a politician of the late Roman Republic and the nephew of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. He was also a brother-in-law of Pompey, having married his sister Pompeia. Early life Publius Cornelius Sulla was the son ...
, followed by the invalidation of the results. They were accused and convicted of , electoral corruption, preventing them from entering office and expelling them from the senate. The two other leading candidates,
Lucius Manlius Torquatus Lucius Manlius Torquatus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 65 BC, elected after the condemnation of Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius Autronius Paetus. Biography Torquatus belonged to the patrician gens Manlii, one of the oldest Roman ho ...
and Lucius Aurelius Cotta, were elected in a second election and then slated to enter office on the first day of 65 BC in their place. Catiline supposedly became involved when his consular candidacy was rejected by the presiding magistrate for the comitia in 66 BC, Lucius Volcatius Tullus.


Accounts

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
's account survives, although scattered over a number of speeches. At various times and contexts, he claimed there was a conspiracy: * involving Catiline and Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso to massacre conservative senators some time in 65 BC, * involving Autronius, Sulla, and Catiline to make Autronius and Sulla consuls conceived of in 66 and to be executed at the start of 65 BC, * mentioning only Catiline with vague activity and goals in December 66 BC, and * involving Autronius and Catiline to make themselves consuls.
Sallust Gaius Sallustius Crispus, usually anglicised as Sallust (; 86 – ), was a Roman historian and politician from an Italian plebeian family. Probably born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines, Sallust became during the 50s BC a partisan o ...
describes a conspiracy developed in December 66 BC involving Autronius, Catiline, and Piso to make Autronius and Catiline consuls by violence on 1 January 65 BC. His description then includes a further conspiracy to murder many senators and assume the consulship on 5 February 65 BC after the discovery of the first plot.
Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Ancient Rome, Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditiona ...
's account survives only in the ''Periochae''. The summary thereof states only that "those who had been running for consul and had been condemned for bribery" (Autronius and Sulla) conspired to usurp the consulship.
Suetonius Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; c. AD 69 – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies ...
' account has no mention of Catiline and instead has Autronius conspiring with
Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and ...
(later dictator) and
Marcus Licinius Crassus Marcus Licinius Crassus (; 115 – 53 BC) was a Roman general and statesman who played a key role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. He is often called "the richest man in Rome." Wallechinsky, David & Wallace, I ...
(later Caesar's ally) to butcher the replacement consuls and have Crassus made
dictator A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times ...
with Caesar as . Caesar would help by cooperating with Piso to raise an insurrection in Hispania and elsewhere. Crassus and Caesar would then restore Autronius and Sulla to their vacated consulships.
Cassius Dio Lucius Cassius Dio (), also known as Dio Cassius ( ), was a Roman historian and senator of maternal Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of the history on ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the ...
gives no mention of Crassus and Caesar, relating instead that Autronius, Sulla, Catiline, and Piso conspired to make Autronius and Sulla consuls.


Aftermath

In the aftermath of the rumours, the senate voted to provide bodyguards for the consuls and to establish an inquiry; the inquiry, however, was vetoed by one of the tribunes. When Catiline was tried for corruption later in 65 BC, one of the sitting consuls he was alleged to have planned to murder,
Lucius Manlius Torquatus Lucius Manlius Torquatus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 65 BC, elected after the condemnation of Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius Autronius Paetus. Biography Torquatus belonged to the patrician gens Manlii, one of the oldest Roman ho ...
, appeared in his defence and indicated his disbelief of the rumours.
Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
, on his part, however, continued to slander Catiline through following years with the allegations, due both to his personal enmity with Catiline and his desire to "magnify his achievement" in suppressing Catiline's revolt in 63 BC.


Modern views

Modern historians today, almost universally, doubt that the conspiracy ever existed and view it as fictitious. Older scholarship had varied views, positing various theories: The conspirators could have been agents of a shadowy anti-Pompeian faction or a motley group of opportunists. Catiline may have been an ally of Torquatus, Sulla, or have been unrelated, engaging only tangentially because of the trial of Gaius Manilius in December 66 BC. But since the 1960s, basically all historians now reject the conspiracy's historicity.
Robin Seager Robin Seager is an English historian. He is an honorary senior research fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, UK. Seager was a reader in classics and ancient history at the University of Liv ...
in a 1964 article proposes means by which the legend was developed: Cicero sought to discredit Catiline prior to his consulship by associating him to a supposed plot that came to nothing; he later excised Publius Sulla from his descriptions when he needed to defend him. Another tradition attempted something similar by putting Caesar's name into the mix. Of the possibility of a core conspiracy by the two consuls-designate unseated for corruption, Seager writes "it is inconceivable that there was such a plot... they could have had no hope of recovering the consulship even for a single day". As to Suetonius' claims, beyond the fact that Crassus and Caesar could have had no part in a non-existent conspiracy, they would have had no reason to join one: the two would have had nothing to gain and everything to lose. As to Piso's involvement, Seager dismisses any such involvement as implausible given that he soon received the honour of an early governorship in Spain from the senate.
Erich S. Gruen Erich Stephen Gruen ( , ; born May 7, 1935) is an American classicist and ancient historian. He was the Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught full-time from 1966 until 2008 ...
in a 1969 article similarly dismisses the ancient descriptions as "hopelessly muddled by propaganda and invective", explaining that after the actual Catilinarian conspiracy in 63 BC, "it was in any politician's interest to associate his enemies with Catiline" and that later stories embellished this by inventing a role for Caesar and Crassus after Caesar's polarising consulship in 59 BC. Catiline may have engaged in some demonstrations related to a riotous trial – that of Manilius – at the end of 66 BC, but there is little reliable evidence of a connection between those demonstrations and any attempts to overturn the consular elections.


References


Citations


Modern sources

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Ancient sources

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Further reading

* {{refend Catiline Conspiracies 65 BC 1st century BC in the Roman Republic