July 26, 2025 • 27 mins
Dive into the captivating life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, an influential orator, statesman, philosopher, and correspondent who emerged as a new man in the chaotic final years of Romes republican government. In this biography, acclaimed novelist Anthony Trollope delivers a passionate defense of Ciceros virtues against critics who question his political and personal strength. Trollopes personal approach offers a unique glimpse into his own thought process and era, as well as those of Cicero. Volume I explores Ciceros formative years, his ascension through the courts and state offices to the Consulship, and his subsequent exile. This version omits footnotes and appendices, which mostly consist of bibliographical citations, Latin quotations, and substantial extracts from other works, unless they are explicitly referred to in the main text. Catch up with Volume II after this.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter nine, Part one of the Life of Cicero, Volume one.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Philippa Jevons. The Life
of Cicero, Volume one by Anthony Trollope, Chapter nine, Catiline,
(00:21):
Part one. To wash the blackamoor white has been the
favorite task of some modern historians. To find a paradox
in character is a relief to the investigating mind, which
does not care to walk always in the well tried paths,
or to follow the grooves made plain and uninteresting by
earlier writers. Tiberius and even Nero have been praised. The
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memories of our early years have been shocked by instructions
to regard Richard the third and Henry the eighth as
great and scrupulous kings. The devil may have been painted
blacker than he should be, and the minds of just
men who will not accept the verdict of the majority
have been much exercised to put the matter right. We
are now told that Cataline was a popular hero, that
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though he might have wished to murder Cicero, he was
in accordance with the practice of his days. Not much
to be blamed for that, and that he was simply
the follower of the Grachai and the forerunner of Caesar,
in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of Rome. In
this there is much that is true. Murder was common.
He who had seen the sullen prescriptions, as both Catiline
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and Cicero had done, might well have learned to feel
less scrupulous as to blood than we do in these days.
Even Cicero, who was of all the Romans the most humane,
even he, no doubt would have been well contented that
Cataline should have been destroyed by the people. Even he
was the cause, as we shall see just now of
the execution of the leaders of the conspirators whom Catiline
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left behind him in the city, an execution of which
the legality is at any rate very doubtful. But in
judging even of bloodshed, we have to regard the circumstances
of the time. In the verdicts we give our consciousness
of altered manners, and of the growth of gentleness forces
upon us. We cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered Caesar
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as we would do those who might now plot the
death of a tyrant. Nor can we deal as heavily
with the murderers of Caesar as we would have done
then with the Catlinarian conspirators in Rome, had Cataline's conspiracy succeeded,
And so too, in acknowledging that Cataline was the outcome
of the Grachai, and to some extent, the preparation for Caesar,
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we must again compare him with them, his motives and
designs with theirs, before we can allow ourselves to sympathize
with him, Because there was much in them worthy of
praise and honor. That the Grachai were seditious, no historian
has I think denied they were willing to use the
usages and laws of the republic where those usages and
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laws insisted them, but as willing to act illegally when
the usages and laws ran counter to them. In the
reforms or changes which they attempted. They were undoubtedly rebels.
But no reader comes across the tale of the death
the first of one and then of the other without
a regret. It has to be owned that they were
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murdered in tumults which they themselves had occasioned, But they
were honest and patriotic. History has declared of them that
their efforts were made with the real purport of relieving
their fellow countrymen from what they believed to be the
tyranny of oligarchs. The republic, even in their time, had
become too rotten to be saved. But the world has
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not the less given them the credit for a desire
to do good, and the names of the two brothers,
rebels as they were, have come down to us with
a sweet savor about them. Caesar, on the other hand,
was no doubt of the same political party. He too
was opposed to the oligarchs, but it never occurred to
him that he could save the rac public by any
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struggles after freedom. His mind was not given to patriotism
of that sort, not to memories, not to associations. Even
laws were nothing to him, but as they might be
useful to his thinking. Probably even in his early days,
the state of Rome required a master. Its wealth, its pleasures,
its soldiers, its power were there for anyone to take,
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who could take them, for anyone to hold, who could
hold them. Mister Beasley, the last defender of Cataline, has
stated that very little was known in Rome of Caesar
till the time of Cataline's conspiracy, and in that I
agree with him. He possessed high family rank, and had
been quistore and eedyle. But it was only from this
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year out that his name was much in men's mouths,
and that he was learning to look into things. It
may be that he had previously been in league with Cataline,
that he was in league with him till the time
came for the great attempt. The evidence has, as it goes,
seems to show that it was so. Rome had been
the prey of many conspiracies. The dominion of Marius and
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the dominion of Sullah had been effected by conspiracies. No doubt.
The opinion was strong with many that both Caesar and
Crassus the rich Man, were concerned with Cataline. But Caesar
was very far seeing, and if such connection existed, knew
how to withdraw from it when the time was not
found to be opportune. But from first to last he
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always was opposed to the oligarchy. The various steps from
the Grachai to him were as those which had to
be made from the Girondists to Napoleon Catiline. No doubt,
was one of the steps as were Danton and Robespierre's steps.
The continuation of steps in each case was at first
occasioned by the bad government and greed of a few
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men in power. But as Robespierre was vile and low,
whereas Verneux was honest and Napoleon great, so was it
with Catiline between the Grachai and Caesar. There is, to
my thinking, no excuse for Catiline in the fact that
he was a natural step, not even though he were
a necessary step between the Grachai and Caesar. I regard
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as futile the attempts which are made to rewrite history
on the base of moral convictions and philosophical conclusion. History
very often has been, and no doubt often again will
be rewritten, with good effect and in the service of truth.
On the founding of new facts. Records have been brought
to light which have hitherto been buried, and testimonies are
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compared with testimonies which have not before been seen together.
But to imagine that a man may have been good,
who has lain under the ban of all the historians,
all the poets, and all the tellers of anecdotes, and
then to declare such goodness simply in accordance with the
dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is
to disturb rather than to assist. History of Catiline. We
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at least know that he headed a sedition in Rome
in the year of Cicero's consulship, that he left the
city suddenly, that he was killed in the neighborhood of Pistoia,
fighting against the generals of the Republic, and that he
left certain accomplices in Rome who were put to death
by an edict of the Senate. So much, I think
is certain to the most truculent doubter. From his contemporaries
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Sallust and Cicero, we have a very strongly expressed opinion
of his character. They have left to us denunciations of
the man which have made him odious to all after ages,
so that modern poets have made him a stock character
and have dramatized him as a fiend. Voltaire has described
him as calling upon his fellow conspirators to murder Cicero
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and Cato, and to burn the city. Ben Jonson makes
Catiline kill a slave and mix his blood to be
drained by his friends. There cannot be a fitter drink
to make this sanction in the friends of Catali will
say that this shows no evidence against the man. None, certainly,
But it is a continued expression of the feeling that
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has prevailed since Cataline's time. In his own age, Cicero
and Sallus, who were opposed in all their political views,
combined to speak ill of him. In the next Vergil
makes him as suffering his punishment in hell. In the
next Valeus Pertculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom
Cicero had banished. Juvenal makes various allusions to him, but
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all in the same spirit. Juvenal cared nothing for history,
but used the names of well known persons as illustrations
of the idea which he was presenting. Valerius Maximus, who
wrote commendable little essays about all the virtues and all
the vices, which he illustrated with the names of all
the vicious and all the virtuous people he knew, is
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very severe on Cataline. Florus, who wrote two centuries and
a half after the conspiracy, gives us of Catiline the
same personal story as that told both by Sallust and Cicero.
Debauchery in the first place, and then the poverty which
that had produced, and then the opportunity of the time,
because the Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline
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to conspire for the destruction of his country. Momson, who
was certainly biased by no feeling in favor of Cicero,
declares that Catiline in particular was one of the most
nefarious men in that nefarious age. His villainies belonged to
the criminal records, not to history. All this is no evidence.
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Cicero and Sallust may possibly have combined to lie about Catiline.
Other Roman writers may have followed them, and modern poets
and modern historians may have followed the Roman writers. It
is possible that the world may have been wrong as
to a period of Roman history with which it has
thought itself to be well acquainted. But the world now
has nothing to go by but the facts as they
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have come down to it. The writers of the ages
since have combined to speak of Cicero with respect and admiration.
They have combined also to speak of Cataline with abhorrence.
They have agreed also to treat those other rebels, the Grachi,
after such a fashion that, in spite of their sedition
a sweet savor as I have said, attaches itself to
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their names. For myself, I am contented to take the
opinion of the world, and feel assured that I shall
do no injustice in speaking of Catiline, as all who
have written about him hitherto have spoken of him. I
cannot consent to the building up of a noble patriot
out of such materials as we have concerning him. Two
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strong points have been made for Catiline in mister Beasley's defense.
His ancestors had been consuls when the forefathers of patricians
of a later date were clapping their chapped hands and
throwing up their sweaty nightcaps. That scorn against the people
should be expressed by the aristocrat Casker was well supposed Shakespeare.
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But how did a liberal of the present day bring
himself to do honor to his hero by such allusions?
In truth, however, the glory of ancient blood and the
disgrace attaching to the signs of labour are ideas seldom relinquished,
even by democratic minds. A howard is no were lovelier
than in America, or a sweaty nightcap less relished. We
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are then reminded how Cataline died fighting with the wounds
all in front, and are told that the world has
generally a generous word for the memory of a brave
man dying for his cause. Be that cause what it will,
But for Cataline none. I think there is a mistake
in the sentiment expressed here. To die reasily when death
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must come is but a little thing, and is done
daily by the poorest of mankind. The Romans could generally
do it, and soaken the Chinese. A Zulu is quite
equal to it, And people lower in civilization than Chinese
or Zulus to encounter death or the danger of death,
for the sake of duty when the choice is there.
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But duty and death are preferred to ignominious security, or
better still, to security which shall bring with its self abasement.
That is grand. When I hear that a man rushed
into the field and foremost fighting fell, if there had
been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool. If
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it be that he has chosen to hurry on the
necessary event, as was Cataline's case, I recognize him as
having been endowed with certain physical attributes which are neither
glorious nor disgraceful. That Cataline was constitutionally a brave man.
No one has denied Rush the murderer, was one of
the bravest men of whom I remember to have heard.
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What credit is due to Rush is due to Cataline.
What we believe to be the story of Cataline's life
is this. In Suller's time, he was an engaged, as Behooved,
a great nobleman of ancient blood, in carrying out the
dictator's prescriptions, and in running through whatever means he had.
There are fearful stories told of him as to murdering
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his own son and other relatives, as to which mister
Beasley is no doubt right in saying that such tales
were too lightly told in Rome to deserve implicit confidence,
to serve a purpose, anyone would say anything of any enemy.
Very marvelous qualities are attributed to him, as to having been,
at the same time steeped in luxury and yet able
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and willing to bear all bodily hardships. He probably had
been engaged in murders, as how should a man not
have been so who had served under Sulla during the dictatorship.
He had probably allured some young aristocrats into debauchery, when
all young aristocrats were so allured he had probably undergone
some extremity of cold and hunger. In reading of these things,
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the reader will know by instinct how much he may
believe and how much he should receive as mythic. That
he was a fast young nobleman, brought up to know
no scruples, to disregard blood, and to look upon his
country as a milch cow from which a young nobleman
might be fed, with never ending streams of rich cream,
in the shape of money to be borrowed, wealth to
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be snatched, and above all foreigners to be plundered. We
may take, I think, as proved in spite of his vices,
or by aid of them, he rose in the service
of his country. That such a one should become a
prital and a governor was natural. He went to Africa
with proconsular authority, and of course fleeced the Africans. It
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was as natural as that a flock of sheep should
lose their wool at shearing time. He came back, intent,
as was natural, also on being a consul and of
carrying on the game of promotion and of plunder. But
there came, as spoke in his wheel, the not unusual
spoke of an accusation from the province. While under accusation
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for provincial robbery. He could not come forward as a candidate,
and thus he was stopped in his career. It is
not possible now to unravel all the personal feuds of
the time, the ins and outs of family quarrels. Clodius,
the Clodius, who was afterwards Cicero's notorious enemy and the
victim of Milo's fury, became the accuser of cataline on
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behalf of the Africans. Though Clodius was much the younger,
they were men of the same class. It may be
possible that Clodius was appointed to the work, as it
had been intended that Caycillius should be appointed at the
prosecution of Peries, in order to assure not the conviction
but the acquittal of the guilty man. The historians and
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biographers say that Clodius was at last bought by a bribe,
and that he betrayed the Africans after that fashion. It
may be that such bribery was arranged from the first.
Our interest in that trial lies in the fact that
Cicero no doubt intended from political motives to defend cataline.
It has been said that he did do so. As
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far as we know, he abandoned the intention. We have
no trace of his speech, and no allusion in history
to an occurrence which would certainly have been mentioned. But
there was no reason why he should not have done so.
He defended Fonteus, and I am quite willing to own
that he knew Vontaius to have been a robber. When
I look at the practice of our own times, I
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find that thieves and rebels are defended by honorable advocates
who do not scruple to take their briefs in opposition
to their own opinions. It suited Cicero to do the same.
If I were detected in a plot for blowing up
a cabinet council, I do not doubt but that I
should get the late Attorney general to defend me footnote. Cicero, however,
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declares that he has made a difference between traitors to
their country and other criminals. Pro p. Suller, Chapter three,
wherum etiam kaidam contagio skelens see defendas oum quem ubstra
rictor messe patriai parichidios souspicuere further on, in the same oration,
chapter six, he explains that he had refused to defend
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Autronius because he had known Autronius to be a conspirator
against his country. I cannot admit the truth of the
argument in which mister Forsyth defends the practice of the
English bar in this respect, and in so doing presses
hard upon Cicero. At Rome, he says it was different.
The advocate there was conceived to have a much wider
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discretion than we allow. Neither in Rome nor in England
has the advocate been held to be disgraced by undertaking
the defense of bad men who have been notoriously guilty.
What an English barrister may do, there was no reason
that a Roman advocate should not do in regard to
simple criminality. Cicero himself has explained in the passage I
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have quoted how the Roman practice did differ from ours
in regard to treason. He has stated also that he
knew nothing of the first conspiracy when he offered to
defend Catiline on the score of provincial peculations. No writer
has been heavy on Hortensius for defending Hiies, but only
because he took bribes from veries end of footnote. But Catiline,
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though he was acquitted, was bulked in his candidature for
the consulship of the next year BC sixty five p.
Suller and Antronius were elected. That Sulla, to whose subsequent
defense I have just referred in this note, but were
ejected on the score of bribery, and two others, Torquatus
and Cotta, were elected in their place. In this way,
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three men, standing on high before their countrymen, one having
been debarred from standing for the consulship, and the other
two having been robbed of their prize even when it
was within their grasp, not unnaturally, became traitors at heart,
almost as naturally they came together and conspired. Why should
they have been selected as victims, having only done that
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which every aristocram did as a matter of course, in
following out his recognized profession in living upon the subject nations.
Their conduct had probably been the same as that of others,
or if more glaring, only so much so, as is
always the case with vices as they become more common. However,
the three men fell and became the center of a
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plot which is known as the first Cataline Conspiracy. The
reader must bear in mind that I am now telling
the story of Cataline and going back to a period
of two years before Cicero's consulship, which was BC sixty three.
How during that year Cicero successfully defended Morena when Cato
endeavored to rob him of his coming consulship has already
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been told. It may be that Morena's hands were no
cleaner than those of Suller and Altronious, and that they
lacked only the consular authority and forensic eloquence of the
advocate who defended Morena. At this time, when the two
appointed consuls were rejected, Cicero has hardly as yet taken
any part in public politics. He had been quite store
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edile and prital, filling those administrative offices to the best
of his ability he had. He says, hardly heard of
the first conspiracy. That what he says is true is
I think proved by the absence of all allusion to
it in his early letters or in the speeches or
fragments of speeches that are extant. But that there was
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such a conspiracy, we cannot doubt, nor that the three
men named Catiline, Suller, and Autronius were leaders in it.
What would interest us if only we could have the
truth is whether Caesar and Crassus were joined in it.
It is necessary again to consider the condition of the republic.
To us, a conspiracy to subvert the government under which
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the conspirer lives seems either a very terrible remedy for
great evils, or an attempt to do evil, which all
good men should oppose. We have the happy conspiracy in
which Washington became the military leader, and the French Revolution, which,
bloody as it was, succeeded in rescuing Frenchmen from the
condition of serfdom at home. We have our own conspiracy
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against the Stuart Royalty, which had also noble results. The
Grachai had attempted to effect something of the same kind
at Rome, but the moral condition of the people had
become so low that no real love of liberty remained. Conspiracy. Oh, yes,
as long as there was anything to get. Of course,
he who had not got it would conspire against him
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who had. There had been conspiracies for and against Marius four,
and against Sinna, for and against Sullah. There was a
grasping for plunder, a thirst for power, which meant luxury,
agreed for blood which grew from the hatred which such
rivalry produced. These were the motive causes for conspiracies, not
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whether Romans should be free, but whether a Sulla or
a Cotta should be allowed to run riot in a province.
Caesar at this time had not done much in the
Roman world except fall greatly into debt. Knowing as we
know now his immense intellectual capacity, we cannot doubt but
at the age he had now reached thirty five BC
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sixty five, he had considered deeply his prospects in life.
There is no reason for supposing that he had conceived
the idea of being a great soldier that came to
him by pure accident some years afterwards, to be kwaistre
pritor and consul and catch what was going seems to
have been the cause to him of having encountered extraordinary debt.
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That he would have been a Veries or a Fonteus
or a Cataline. We are certainly not entitled to think
over whatever people he might have come to reign, and
in whatever way he might have procured his kingdom, he
would have reigned with a far seeing eye fixed upon
future results. At this period he was looking out for
a way to advance himself. There were three men, all
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just six years his senior, who had risen or were
rising into great repute. They were Pompey, Cicero, and Catiline.
There were two who were noted for having clean hands
in the midst of all the dirt around, and they
were undoubtedly the first romans of the day. Catiline was
determined that he too would be among the first romans
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of the day, but his hands had never been clean,
which was the better way for such a one as
Caesar to go. To have had Pompey under his feet
or Cicero must have then seemed to Caesar to be impracticable,
though the time came when he did, in different ways,
have his feet on both with Catiline, the chance of
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success might be better Crassus, he had already compassed. Crassus
was like Monsieur Poitier in the play, a man who,
having become rich, then allowed himself the luxury of an ambition.
If Caesar joined the plot, we can well understand that
Crassus should have gone with him. We have all but
sufficient authority for saying that it was so, authority insufficient
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for declaring it that Sallust, in his short account of
the First Conspiracy, should not have implicated Caesar was a
matter of course, as he wrote altogether in Caesar's interest,
that Cicero should not have mentioned. It is also quite
intelligible he did not wish to pull down upon his
ears the whole house of the aristocracy. Throughout his career,
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it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law,
with what smallest breach of it might be possible. But
he was wise enough to know that when the laws
were being broken on every side, he could not catch
in his nets all those who broke them. He had
to pass over much to make the best of the
state of things as he found them. It is not
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to be supposed that a conspirator against the republic would
be horrible to him, as would be to us a
traitor against the crown. There were too many of them
for horror. If Caesar and Crassus could be got to
keep themselves quiet, he would be willing enough not to
have to add them to his list of enemies. Livy
is presumed to have told us that this conspiracy intended
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to restore the ejected consuls and to kill the consuls
who had been established in their place. But the book
in which this is written is lost, and we have
only the epitome or heading of the book, of which
we know that it was not written by Livy. Suetonius,
who got his story not improbably from Livy, tells us
that Caesar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with Crassus,
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and he goes on to say that Cicero, writing subsequently
to one Axius, declared that Caesar had attempted in his
consulship to accomplish the dominion which he had intended to
grasp in his edelship the year in question. There is, however,
no such letter extant, Asconius, who, as I have said before,
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wrote in the time of Tiberius, declares that Cicero, in
his lost oration in Toga Candida, accused Crassus of having
been the author of the conspiracy. Such is the information
we have, and if we elect to believe that Caesar
was then joined with Catiline, we must be guided by
our ideas of probability rather than by evidence. As I
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have said before, conspiracies had been very rife to Caesar.
It was no doubt becoming manifest that the republic, with
its oligarchs must fall. Subsequently, it did fall, and he
was I will not say the conspirator, nor will I
judge the question by saying that he was the traitor.
But the man of power, who, having the legions of
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the republic in his hands, used them against the Republic.
I can well understand that he should have joined such
a conspiracy as this first of Catiline, and then have
backed out of it when he found that he could
not trust those who were joined with him. The conspiracy failed,
one man omitted to give a signal at one time,
and another at another. The Senate was to have been slaughtered,
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the two consuls Cotta and Torquatus murdered, and the two
ex consuls Suller and Outronious replaced. Though all the details
seemed to have been known to the consuls, Cataline was
allowed to go free, nor were any steps taken for
the punishment of the conspirators. End of Chapter nine, Part
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one
Chapter nine, Part one of the Life of Cicero, Volume one.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Philippa Jevons. The Life
of Cicero, Volume one by Anthony Trollope, Chapter nine, Catiline,
(00:21):
Part one. To wash the blackamoor white has been the
favorite task of some modern historians. To find a paradox
in character is a relief to the investigating mind, which
does not care to walk always in the well tried paths,
or to follow the grooves made plain and uninteresting by
earlier writers. Tiberius and even Nero have been praised. The
(00:45):
memories of our early years have been shocked by instructions
to regard Richard the third and Henry the eighth as
great and scrupulous kings. The devil may have been painted
blacker than he should be, and the minds of just
men who will not accept the verdict of the majority
have been much exercised to put the matter right. We
are now told that Cataline was a popular hero, that
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though he might have wished to murder Cicero, he was
in accordance with the practice of his days. Not much
to be blamed for that, and that he was simply
the follower of the Grachai and the forerunner of Caesar,
in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of Rome. In
this there is much that is true. Murder was common.
He who had seen the sullen prescriptions, as both Catiline
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and Cicero had done, might well have learned to feel
less scrupulous as to blood than we do in these days.
Even Cicero, who was of all the Romans the most humane,
even he, no doubt would have been well contented that
Cataline should have been destroyed by the people. Even he
was the cause, as we shall see just now of
the execution of the leaders of the conspirators whom Catiline
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left behind him in the city, an execution of which
the legality is at any rate very doubtful. But in
judging even of bloodshed, we have to regard the circumstances
of the time. In the verdicts we give our consciousness
of altered manners, and of the growth of gentleness forces
upon us. We cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered Caesar
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as we would do those who might now plot the
death of a tyrant. Nor can we deal as heavily
with the murderers of Caesar as we would have done
then with the Catlinarian conspirators in Rome, had Cataline's conspiracy succeeded,
And so too, in acknowledging that Cataline was the outcome
of the Grachai, and to some extent, the preparation for Caesar,
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we must again compare him with them, his motives and
designs with theirs, before we can allow ourselves to sympathize
with him, Because there was much in them worthy of
praise and honor. That the Grachai were seditious, no historian
has I think denied they were willing to use the
usages and laws of the republic where those usages and
(02:59):
laws insisted them, but as willing to act illegally when
the usages and laws ran counter to them. In the
reforms or changes which they attempted. They were undoubtedly rebels.
But no reader comes across the tale of the death
the first of one and then of the other without
a regret. It has to be owned that they were
(03:19):
murdered in tumults which they themselves had occasioned, But they
were honest and patriotic. History has declared of them that
their efforts were made with the real purport of relieving
their fellow countrymen from what they believed to be the
tyranny of oligarchs. The republic, even in their time, had
become too rotten to be saved. But the world has
(03:40):
not the less given them the credit for a desire
to do good, and the names of the two brothers,
rebels as they were, have come down to us with
a sweet savor about them. Caesar, on the other hand,
was no doubt of the same political party. He too
was opposed to the oligarchs, but it never occurred to
him that he could save the rac public by any
(04:00):
struggles after freedom. His mind was not given to patriotism
of that sort, not to memories, not to associations. Even
laws were nothing to him, but as they might be
useful to his thinking. Probably even in his early days,
the state of Rome required a master. Its wealth, its pleasures,
its soldiers, its power were there for anyone to take,
(04:24):
who could take them, for anyone to hold, who could
hold them. Mister Beasley, the last defender of Cataline, has
stated that very little was known in Rome of Caesar
till the time of Cataline's conspiracy, and in that I
agree with him. He possessed high family rank, and had
been quistore and eedyle. But it was only from this
(04:45):
year out that his name was much in men's mouths,
and that he was learning to look into things. It
may be that he had previously been in league with Cataline,
that he was in league with him till the time
came for the great attempt. The evidence has, as it goes,
seems to show that it was so. Rome had been
the prey of many conspiracies. The dominion of Marius and
(05:08):
the dominion of Sullah had been effected by conspiracies. No doubt.
The opinion was strong with many that both Caesar and
Crassus the rich Man, were concerned with Cataline. But Caesar
was very far seeing, and if such connection existed, knew
how to withdraw from it when the time was not
found to be opportune. But from first to last he
(05:30):
always was opposed to the oligarchy. The various steps from
the Grachai to him were as those which had to
be made from the Girondists to Napoleon Catiline. No doubt,
was one of the steps as were Danton and Robespierre's steps.
The continuation of steps in each case was at first
occasioned by the bad government and greed of a few
(05:52):
men in power. But as Robespierre was vile and low,
whereas Verneux was honest and Napoleon great, so was it
with Catiline between the Grachai and Caesar. There is, to
my thinking, no excuse for Catiline in the fact that
he was a natural step, not even though he were
a necessary step between the Grachai and Caesar. I regard
(06:16):
as futile the attempts which are made to rewrite history
on the base of moral convictions and philosophical conclusion. History
very often has been, and no doubt often again will
be rewritten, with good effect and in the service of truth.
On the founding of new facts. Records have been brought
to light which have hitherto been buried, and testimonies are
(06:37):
compared with testimonies which have not before been seen together.
But to imagine that a man may have been good,
who has lain under the ban of all the historians,
all the poets, and all the tellers of anecdotes, and
then to declare such goodness simply in accordance with the
dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is
to disturb rather than to assist. History of Catiline. We
(07:01):
at least know that he headed a sedition in Rome
in the year of Cicero's consulship, that he left the
city suddenly, that he was killed in the neighborhood of Pistoia,
fighting against the generals of the Republic, and that he
left certain accomplices in Rome who were put to death
by an edict of the Senate. So much, I think
is certain to the most truculent doubter. From his contemporaries
(07:24):
Sallust and Cicero, we have a very strongly expressed opinion
of his character. They have left to us denunciations of
the man which have made him odious to all after ages,
so that modern poets have made him a stock character
and have dramatized him as a fiend. Voltaire has described
him as calling upon his fellow conspirators to murder Cicero
(07:45):
and Cato, and to burn the city. Ben Jonson makes
Catiline kill a slave and mix his blood to be
drained by his friends. There cannot be a fitter drink
to make this sanction in the friends of Catali will
say that this shows no evidence against the man. None, certainly,
But it is a continued expression of the feeling that
(08:07):
has prevailed since Cataline's time. In his own age, Cicero
and Sallus, who were opposed in all their political views,
combined to speak ill of him. In the next Vergil
makes him as suffering his punishment in hell. In the
next Valeus Pertculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom
Cicero had banished. Juvenal makes various allusions to him, but
(08:31):
all in the same spirit. Juvenal cared nothing for history,
but used the names of well known persons as illustrations
of the idea which he was presenting. Valerius Maximus, who
wrote commendable little essays about all the virtues and all
the vices, which he illustrated with the names of all
the vicious and all the virtuous people he knew, is
(08:51):
very severe on Cataline. Florus, who wrote two centuries and
a half after the conspiracy, gives us of Catiline the
same personal story as that told both by Sallust and Cicero.
Debauchery in the first place, and then the poverty which
that had produced, and then the opportunity of the time,
because the Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline
(09:14):
to conspire for the destruction of his country. Momson, who
was certainly biased by no feeling in favor of Cicero,
declares that Catiline in particular was one of the most
nefarious men in that nefarious age. His villainies belonged to
the criminal records, not to history. All this is no evidence.
(09:35):
Cicero and Sallust may possibly have combined to lie about Catiline.
Other Roman writers may have followed them, and modern poets
and modern historians may have followed the Roman writers. It
is possible that the world may have been wrong as
to a period of Roman history with which it has
thought itself to be well acquainted. But the world now
has nothing to go by but the facts as they
(09:57):
have come down to it. The writers of the ages
since have combined to speak of Cicero with respect and admiration.
They have combined also to speak of Cataline with abhorrence.
They have agreed also to treat those other rebels, the Grachi,
after such a fashion that, in spite of their sedition
a sweet savor as I have said, attaches itself to
(10:19):
their names. For myself, I am contented to take the
opinion of the world, and feel assured that I shall
do no injustice in speaking of Catiline, as all who
have written about him hitherto have spoken of him. I
cannot consent to the building up of a noble patriot
out of such materials as we have concerning him. Two
(10:39):
strong points have been made for Catiline in mister Beasley's defense.
His ancestors had been consuls when the forefathers of patricians
of a later date were clapping their chapped hands and
throwing up their sweaty nightcaps. That scorn against the people
should be expressed by the aristocrat Casker was well supposed Shakespeare.
(11:01):
But how did a liberal of the present day bring
himself to do honor to his hero by such allusions?
In truth, however, the glory of ancient blood and the
disgrace attaching to the signs of labour are ideas seldom relinquished,
even by democratic minds. A howard is no were lovelier
than in America, or a sweaty nightcap less relished. We
(11:24):
are then reminded how Cataline died fighting with the wounds
all in front, and are told that the world has
generally a generous word for the memory of a brave
man dying for his cause. Be that cause what it will,
But for Cataline none. I think there is a mistake
in the sentiment expressed here. To die reasily when death
(11:45):
must come is but a little thing, and is done
daily by the poorest of mankind. The Romans could generally
do it, and soaken the Chinese. A Zulu is quite
equal to it, And people lower in civilization than Chinese
or Zulus to encounter death or the danger of death,
for the sake of duty when the choice is there.
(12:06):
But duty and death are preferred to ignominious security, or
better still, to security which shall bring with its self abasement.
That is grand. When I hear that a man rushed
into the field and foremost fighting fell, if there had
been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool. If
(12:27):
it be that he has chosen to hurry on the
necessary event, as was Cataline's case, I recognize him as
having been endowed with certain physical attributes which are neither
glorious nor disgraceful. That Cataline was constitutionally a brave man.
No one has denied Rush the murderer, was one of
the bravest men of whom I remember to have heard.
(12:50):
What credit is due to Rush is due to Cataline.
What we believe to be the story of Cataline's life
is this. In Suller's time, he was an engaged, as Behooved,
a great nobleman of ancient blood, in carrying out the
dictator's prescriptions, and in running through whatever means he had.
There are fearful stories told of him as to murdering
(13:11):
his own son and other relatives, as to which mister
Beasley is no doubt right in saying that such tales
were too lightly told in Rome to deserve implicit confidence,
to serve a purpose, anyone would say anything of any enemy.
Very marvelous qualities are attributed to him, as to having been,
at the same time steeped in luxury and yet able
(13:33):
and willing to bear all bodily hardships. He probably had
been engaged in murders, as how should a man not
have been so who had served under Sulla during the dictatorship.
He had probably allured some young aristocrats into debauchery, when
all young aristocrats were so allured he had probably undergone
some extremity of cold and hunger. In reading of these things,
(13:57):
the reader will know by instinct how much he may
believe and how much he should receive as mythic. That
he was a fast young nobleman, brought up to know
no scruples, to disregard blood, and to look upon his
country as a milch cow from which a young nobleman
might be fed, with never ending streams of rich cream,
in the shape of money to be borrowed, wealth to
(14:18):
be snatched, and above all foreigners to be plundered. We
may take, I think, as proved in spite of his vices,
or by aid of them, he rose in the service
of his country. That such a one should become a
prital and a governor was natural. He went to Africa
with proconsular authority, and of course fleeced the Africans. It
(14:40):
was as natural as that a flock of sheep should
lose their wool at shearing time. He came back, intent,
as was natural, also on being a consul and of
carrying on the game of promotion and of plunder. But
there came, as spoke in his wheel, the not unusual
spoke of an accusation from the province. While under accusation
(15:00):
for provincial robbery. He could not come forward as a candidate,
and thus he was stopped in his career. It is
not possible now to unravel all the personal feuds of
the time, the ins and outs of family quarrels. Clodius,
the Clodius, who was afterwards Cicero's notorious enemy and the
victim of Milo's fury, became the accuser of cataline on
(15:22):
behalf of the Africans. Though Clodius was much the younger,
they were men of the same class. It may be
possible that Clodius was appointed to the work, as it
had been intended that Caycillius should be appointed at the
prosecution of Peries, in order to assure not the conviction
but the acquittal of the guilty man. The historians and
(15:43):
biographers say that Clodius was at last bought by a bribe,
and that he betrayed the Africans after that fashion. It
may be that such bribery was arranged from the first.
Our interest in that trial lies in the fact that
Cicero no doubt intended from political motives to defend cataline.
It has been said that he did do so. As
(16:04):
far as we know, he abandoned the intention. We have
no trace of his speech, and no allusion in history
to an occurrence which would certainly have been mentioned. But
there was no reason why he should not have done so.
He defended Fonteus, and I am quite willing to own
that he knew Vontaius to have been a robber. When
I look at the practice of our own times, I
(16:25):
find that thieves and rebels are defended by honorable advocates
who do not scruple to take their briefs in opposition
to their own opinions. It suited Cicero to do the same.
If I were detected in a plot for blowing up
a cabinet council, I do not doubt but that I
should get the late Attorney general to defend me footnote. Cicero, however,
(16:46):
declares that he has made a difference between traitors to
their country and other criminals. Pro p. Suller, Chapter three,
wherum etiam kaidam contagio skelens see defendas oum quem ubstra
rictor messe patriai parichidios souspicuere further on, in the same oration,
chapter six, he explains that he had refused to defend
(17:09):
Autronius because he had known Autronius to be a conspirator
against his country. I cannot admit the truth of the
argument in which mister Forsyth defends the practice of the
English bar in this respect, and in so doing presses
hard upon Cicero. At Rome, he says it was different.
The advocate there was conceived to have a much wider
(17:29):
discretion than we allow. Neither in Rome nor in England
has the advocate been held to be disgraced by undertaking
the defense of bad men who have been notoriously guilty.
What an English barrister may do, there was no reason
that a Roman advocate should not do in regard to
simple criminality. Cicero himself has explained in the passage I
(17:50):
have quoted how the Roman practice did differ from ours
in regard to treason. He has stated also that he
knew nothing of the first conspiracy when he offered to
defend Catiline on the score of provincial peculations. No writer
has been heavy on Hortensius for defending Hiies, but only
because he took bribes from veries end of footnote. But Catiline,
(18:14):
though he was acquitted, was bulked in his candidature for
the consulship of the next year BC sixty five p.
Suller and Antronius were elected. That Sulla, to whose subsequent
defense I have just referred in this note, but were
ejected on the score of bribery, and two others, Torquatus
and Cotta, were elected in their place. In this way,
(18:36):
three men, standing on high before their countrymen, one having
been debarred from standing for the consulship, and the other
two having been robbed of their prize even when it
was within their grasp, not unnaturally, became traitors at heart,
almost as naturally they came together and conspired. Why should
they have been selected as victims, having only done that
(18:58):
which every aristocram did as a matter of course, in
following out his recognized profession in living upon the subject nations.
Their conduct had probably been the same as that of others,
or if more glaring, only so much so, as is
always the case with vices as they become more common. However,
the three men fell and became the center of a
(19:19):
plot which is known as the first Cataline Conspiracy. The
reader must bear in mind that I am now telling
the story of Cataline and going back to a period
of two years before Cicero's consulship, which was BC sixty three.
How during that year Cicero successfully defended Morena when Cato
endeavored to rob him of his coming consulship has already
(19:40):
been told. It may be that Morena's hands were no
cleaner than those of Suller and Altronious, and that they
lacked only the consular authority and forensic eloquence of the
advocate who defended Morena. At this time, when the two
appointed consuls were rejected, Cicero has hardly as yet taken
any part in public politics. He had been quite store
(20:03):
edile and prital, filling those administrative offices to the best
of his ability he had. He says, hardly heard of
the first conspiracy. That what he says is true is
I think proved by the absence of all allusion to
it in his early letters or in the speeches or
fragments of speeches that are extant. But that there was
(20:23):
such a conspiracy, we cannot doubt, nor that the three
men named Catiline, Suller, and Autronius were leaders in it.
What would interest us if only we could have the
truth is whether Caesar and Crassus were joined in it.
It is necessary again to consider the condition of the republic.
To us, a conspiracy to subvert the government under which
(20:44):
the conspirer lives seems either a very terrible remedy for
great evils, or an attempt to do evil, which all
good men should oppose. We have the happy conspiracy in
which Washington became the military leader, and the French Revolution, which,
bloody as it was, succeeded in rescuing Frenchmen from the
condition of serfdom at home. We have our own conspiracy
(21:07):
against the Stuart Royalty, which had also noble results. The
Grachai had attempted to effect something of the same kind
at Rome, but the moral condition of the people had
become so low that no real love of liberty remained. Conspiracy. Oh, yes,
as long as there was anything to get. Of course,
he who had not got it would conspire against him
(21:28):
who had. There had been conspiracies for and against Marius four,
and against Sinna, for and against Sullah. There was a
grasping for plunder, a thirst for power, which meant luxury,
agreed for blood which grew from the hatred which such
rivalry produced. These were the motive causes for conspiracies, not
(21:50):
whether Romans should be free, but whether a Sulla or
a Cotta should be allowed to run riot in a province.
Caesar at this time had not done much in the
Roman world except fall greatly into debt. Knowing as we
know now his immense intellectual capacity, we cannot doubt but
at the age he had now reached thirty five BC
(22:10):
sixty five, he had considered deeply his prospects in life.
There is no reason for supposing that he had conceived
the idea of being a great soldier that came to
him by pure accident some years afterwards, to be kwaistre
pritor and consul and catch what was going seems to
have been the cause to him of having encountered extraordinary debt.
(22:33):
That he would have been a Veries or a Fonteus
or a Cataline. We are certainly not entitled to think
over whatever people he might have come to reign, and
in whatever way he might have procured his kingdom, he
would have reigned with a far seeing eye fixed upon
future results. At this period he was looking out for
a way to advance himself. There were three men, all
(22:56):
just six years his senior, who had risen or were
rising into great repute. They were Pompey, Cicero, and Catiline.
There were two who were noted for having clean hands
in the midst of all the dirt around, and they
were undoubtedly the first romans of the day. Catiline was
determined that he too would be among the first romans
(23:16):
of the day, but his hands had never been clean,
which was the better way for such a one as
Caesar to go. To have had Pompey under his feet
or Cicero must have then seemed to Caesar to be impracticable,
though the time came when he did, in different ways,
have his feet on both with Catiline, the chance of
(23:37):
success might be better Crassus, he had already compassed. Crassus
was like Monsieur Poitier in the play, a man who,
having become rich, then allowed himself the luxury of an ambition.
If Caesar joined the plot, we can well understand that
Crassus should have gone with him. We have all but
sufficient authority for saying that it was so, authority insufficient
(24:01):
for declaring it that Sallust, in his short account of
the First Conspiracy, should not have implicated Caesar was a
matter of course, as he wrote altogether in Caesar's interest,
that Cicero should not have mentioned. It is also quite
intelligible he did not wish to pull down upon his
ears the whole house of the aristocracy. Throughout his career,
(24:22):
it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law,
with what smallest breach of it might be possible. But
he was wise enough to know that when the laws
were being broken on every side, he could not catch
in his nets all those who broke them. He had
to pass over much to make the best of the
state of things as he found them. It is not
(24:42):
to be supposed that a conspirator against the republic would
be horrible to him, as would be to us a
traitor against the crown. There were too many of them
for horror. If Caesar and Crassus could be got to
keep themselves quiet, he would be willing enough not to
have to add them to his list of enemies. Livy
is presumed to have told us that this conspiracy intended
(25:03):
to restore the ejected consuls and to kill the consuls
who had been established in their place. But the book
in which this is written is lost, and we have
only the epitome or heading of the book, of which
we know that it was not written by Livy. Suetonius,
who got his story not improbably from Livy, tells us
that Caesar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with Crassus,
(25:28):
and he goes on to say that Cicero, writing subsequently
to one Axius, declared that Caesar had attempted in his
consulship to accomplish the dominion which he had intended to
grasp in his edelship the year in question. There is, however,
no such letter extant, Asconius, who, as I have said before,
(25:49):
wrote in the time of Tiberius, declares that Cicero, in
his lost oration in Toga Candida, accused Crassus of having
been the author of the conspiracy. Such is the information
we have, and if we elect to believe that Caesar
was then joined with Catiline, we must be guided by
our ideas of probability rather than by evidence. As I
(26:11):
have said before, conspiracies had been very rife to Caesar.
It was no doubt becoming manifest that the republic, with
its oligarchs must fall. Subsequently, it did fall, and he
was I will not say the conspirator, nor will I
judge the question by saying that he was the traitor.
But the man of power, who, having the legions of
(26:32):
the republic in his hands, used them against the Republic.
I can well understand that he should have joined such
a conspiracy as this first of Catiline, and then have
backed out of it when he found that he could
not trust those who were joined with him. The conspiracy failed,
one man omitted to give a signal at one time,
and another at another. The Senate was to have been slaughtered,
(26:57):
the two consuls Cotta and Torquatus murdered, and the two
ex consuls Suller and Outronious replaced. Though all the details
seemed to have been known to the consuls, Cataline was
allowed to go free, nor were any steps taken for
the punishment of the conspirators. End of Chapter nine, Part
(27:17):
one
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