tom of the irritable race. Eight books of Latin epigrams proved his stupidity and his scholarship. He also published some law tracts, said to be of no value.—J. A., D.
CATILINE, or with his full name, L. Sergius Catilina, occupies a much more prominent position in the annals of the civil conflicts of Rome than the influence he exercised upon them would warrant, had not the extant writings of Cicero and Sallust made his name familiar to us from our schoolboy days. Descended from a noble family; endowed with strength of mind and body; with courage, capacity, and ability equal to the discharge of any office, whether civil or military, in the service of his country, he might have satisfied an honourable ambition and become a benefactor of his fellow-citizens. But with great and shining intellectual qualities he combined a moral depravity which, even in his depraved age, secured him a disgraceful prominence. His brutal and savage disposition was stimulated to madness by the intoxicating revelry in infamous lust and civil blood, with which the partisans of Sulla were allowed to gorge themselves after the triumph of their leader. Catiline was foremost among the bloodhounds of the dictator. He had free scope to follow the inclinations of his savage nature, and to restore his dilapidated fortune with the spoils of his victims. He is accused of having murdered his brother-in-law, his wife, his son, and many others, who suffered at his hands not only a cruel death, but more cruel tortures before death, and disgraceful indignities after. Yet, such was the state of public morals of those times, that, nevertheless, he obtained in due season the office of prætor, b.c. 67, and was sent to govern the province of Africa. This is explicable only from the unsettled state of public affairs at that time. Rome had just passed through a sanguinary civil war, which had so thoroughly shaken the principles of legality, that instead of time-honoured and deep-seated reverence for law and order, and for those who, as the executive of the state were the bearers of its majesty, it was force and violence, fraud and cunning, which upheld the government and animated the opposition. Thus Catiline, through his daring and ability, soon found himself the apparent leader of a band of noble profligates, who had nothing to lose and everything to gain in a political and social revolution. It was a matter of no moment to him that the party in power, whom it was his object to overthrow, were his old confederates, the aristocracy. He longed for another general confusion, Sullanic proscriptions, spoliation of the wealthy, and abolition of debts; and he was bold enough to aspire to become a second Sulla himself. It was easy in the then state of society to find confederates among the highest and among the lowest classes. But this was only part of the danger by which the state was menaced. It was no secret to the ruling aristocracy that their real enemy was not Catiline, but a craftier and more dangerous man working behind the scenes, and waiting for an opportune moment to step in and secure for himself all the advantages of their overthrow. This was no other than C. Julius Cæsar. He was too discreet and wary to make common cause with such a desperate character as Catiline. He guarded his words and actions so that no charge of complicity could be brought against him; but, nevertheless, he pulled the strings, and though he may have thought Catiline's success improbable, he knew it was possible, and he lay ready to pounce upon the prey if it should be hunted down by his hounds. The political situation of Rome was very favourable for a bold stroke. Pompey, the champion of the aristocracy, was absent in Asia with all the military strength of the republic. He had brought to a victorious issue the long war with Mithridates. What his intentions were, was a subject of anxious and doubtful speculation for a man like Cæsar. If Pompey returned to Italy with his army, it was in his power to make himself master of the Roman world. No time was, therefore, to be lost if his rivals wished to prevent this. They might hope to obtain possession of the machinery of government, just as Marius and Cinna had done before to oppose Sulla, and as Pompey afterwards did himself to oppose Cæsar. Having constituted themselves the legitimate government, no matter by what means, they might hope to dictate the law to Pompey. To give a colour to this selfish and personal policy, the leaders of this party proclaimed themselves the patrons of the people and the enemies of the aristocracy. They endeavoured to gain adherents by proposing popular measures, such as the agrarian law brought in by Cæsar, by which it was intended to sell all the domain land of the state in the provinces, and to allot land in the valuable domain of Capua to the hungry populace of Rome. Such was the state of parties when Catiline, soon after his return from Africa in b.c. 66, attempted to seize the consulship by open violence. Cæsar and Crassus are said to have been privy to his conspiracy; but it failed through the impatience of Catiline, who gave the preconcerted signal before his associates were ready. It must create surprise that so outrageous an attempt, which only failed through a mere accident, was not followed by an official investigation, and by the punishment of those implicated in it. But the aristocratical party in possession of the government was without moral strength and without able leaders. United by no principle, its members consulted their own interest alone, which counselled caution rather than vigour and severity. We consequently find Catiline undiscouraged by his first failure, offering himself for the consulship of the year 63 b.c., and straining every nerve to defeat the candidate of the aristocracy, the great political triumvir, M. Tullius Cicero. Foiled in this competition, he determined once more to try his chance at the next consular elections; but at the same time to prepare his party for open resistance and civil war. But Cicero, who, through his spies, was informed of all his doings, met him at every point, and by alarming the people with vague and perhaps exaggerated reports of Catiline's nefarious and bloody schemes, created a general panic, the result of which was that Catiline lost his election a second time. Now there was nothing left to him but open violence. He despatched emissaries into various parts of Italy to organize the insurrection, especially into Etruria, which swarmed with the disbanded veterans of Sulla. He himself resolved to stay at Rome, where, simultaneously with the advance of the insurrectionary forces, an outbreak was prepared, the hideous atrocity of which we could hardly credit, had not the Marian and Sullanic massacres preceded. Even after having fixed upon his atrocious plan, Catiline had the impudence and audacity to appear in the senate, and, when charged by Cicero with every detail of his attempt, to protest his innocence and challenge inquiry. But when he saw the alarm and indignation caused by Cicero's discovery, he left Rome in the following night for the army in Etruria, intrusting the execution of the concerted scheme to his associates. With the flight of Catiline the greatest danger was averted, for in an open war even an abler man must have succumbed to the organized forces of the government. But so long as a powerful section of the conspirators was left in Rome the government could not feel safe. It was well known to Cicero who these conspirators were, and what were their plans. The prætor, P. Cornelius Lentulus, and C. Cornelius Cethegus, were at their head, and grave suspicions attached to Cæsar, Crassus, and even to L. Antonius, Cicero's colleague in the consulship. But such was the feebleness of the government, and the inefficiency of the means of public safety, that these men continued to carry on their treasonable plotting under the very eyes of the public authorities. If their leader, Lentulus, had been a man of capacity they must have succeeded; but whilst neglecting to act promptly and energetically, they seemed to delight only in planning and plotting. They were foolish enough to open negotiations with the members of an embassy of the Celtic tribe of the Allobroges, who were then in Rome on a mission of complaint and remonstrance from their countrymen. The conspirators tried to gain over the Allobroges, for objects so distant and uncertain that we are at a loss to discover them. The Allobrogian ambassadors pretended to listen to these overtures, but at the same time reported the transactions to the consul. The conspirators were immediately summoned to appear in the senate, and being convicted by irrefragable evidence, they confessed their guilt. At this stage one would fancy that the troubles of the government ought to have been over. But in Rome the difficulty seemed rather increased than diminished; for the question arose, what was to be done with the prisoners. There was no efficient force, whether military or police, even to keep the prisoners in safe custody. They might at any time be forcibly liberated by their adherents. Nor was there a short and safe procedure by which they could be tried and punished. The popular assembly for the trial of capital offences had fallen into disuse, and would have been too cumbrous and dangerous a machinery, if it could have been resorted to. The senate had no jurisdiction in this matter, but all the risk and all the responsibility. If, therefore, the city was to be saved from anarchy, it was necessary to strain the law. It fell to the lot of Cicero, one of the most timid and vacillating of public men, to propose
