The Catalinarian Conspiracy and the Late Republic

In this essay, the author

• Describes how lucius sergius catalina fomented a revolution against the roman republic and attempted to become supreme ruler.
• Explains that cicero and sallust fail to provide a clear and unbiased account of the events surrounding what we call the catalinarian conspiracy.
• Analyzes how cicero's orations are hostile to cataline and his followers. he uses venomous rhetoric to sway the opinion of the senate and the people against the conspirators.

• Describes how lucius sergius catalina fomented a revolution against the roman republic and attempted to become supreme ruler.
• Explains that cicero and sallust fail to provide a clear and unbiased account of the events surrounding what we call the catalinarian conspiracy.
• Analyzes how cicero's orations are hostile to cataline and his followers. he uses venomous rhetoric to sway the opinion of the senate and the people against the conspirators.
• Analyzes how cicero exhibits a notable tendency to simplify the situation into "good" against "evil". he depicts his own side as the forces of good, valiantly battling against cataline's forces.
• Analyzes how justice, temperance, prudence, all the virtues, contend with injustice, extravaganza, cowardice, recklessness, and deepest despair.
• Analyzes how cicero uses his worst language to caricature the conspirators and sway public opinion to his side.
• Analyzes how cicero is useful as a source for the events of the conspiracy.
• Analyzes how sallust's the conspiracy of cataline is hostile to the roman state. he begins by describing the decrepit nature of rome and the poor state of its morals.
• Analyzes how sallust, like cicero, is describing a titanic battle between the black and white forces of "good" and "evil".
• Opines that sallust is a valuable resource for the study of the catalinarian conspiracy.
• Analyzes how appian's account of civil wars is useful because it lacks some of the bias in sallust’s. plutarch wrote a biography of cicero that provides "much information and many ideas."
• Explains that although cicero and sallust may be hostile to cataline, they can still accurately portray events and life in rome.
• Analyzes the catalinarian conspiracy within its context in the history of the late roman republic.
• Explains that debt was a problem for small land-holding citizen farmers during the late republic. businessmen bought many small farms from the indebted farmers and formed large farms known as latifundia worked by large gangs of slaves.
• Analyzes how cataline attracted heavily indebted citizens because he advocated the complete forgiveness of all debts. cicero tacitly acknowledges the debt problem in the second oration.
• Argues that deep indebtedness could be explained by the dissolute lifestyle led by many of the conspirators.
• Analyzes how the heavy indebtedness caused an extreme sense of discontent with the government.
• Analyzes how the catalinarian conspiracy reveals that a select class of senatorial leaders monopolized power in the republic. cataline recognized this, saying to his supporters.
• Explains that a powerful oligarchy receives tribute from foreign kings and princes, and rakes in taxes from every people and tribe. the rest of us are nobodies without influence and authority, subservient to men
• Analyzes how cataline was bitter at being left on the outside, perhaps seeing his failure to win the consulship as confirmation of his "outsider" status and the iron control of the offices possessed by a select group of families.
• Analyzes how wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few. plutarch has already been cited, writing of the "unequal distribution of wealth."
• Opines that anyone who has the spirit of a man can endure that they should have superfluous riches to waste in building out to sea and leveling the mountains, while we lack the means to buy necessities.
• Analyzes how the extreme want on one side, caused by heavy debt loads, contrasted sharply with the extravagant wealth on the other side. the public display of this wealth infuriated those who did not, setting the stage for a charismatic leader like cataline.
• Analyzes how the catalinarian conspiracy presents a striking snapshot of life that allows historians to gauge the status and the flaws of the late republic.
• Describes appian's roman history in the loeb classical library: volume iii.
• Explains cicero's the four orations against cataline.
• Opines that florus is the epitome of roman history, trans. edward seymour forster. cambridge, ma: harvard university press.
• Describes plutarch, cicero, rex warner, middlesex, penguin classics, and the fall of the roman republic.
• Explains gruen, erich s., the last generation of the roman republic.
• Explains hardy's the catalinarian conspiracy in its context: a re-study of the evidence.
• Explains that may, james m., trials of character: the eloquence of ciceronian ethos.
• States that scullard, h.h., from the gracchi to nero: a history of rome from 133 b.c. to a.d.