John Roberts - The Catiline Conspiracy

Within the tunnel, I whipped my cloak from my lantern and others did the same. The sudden light revealed the white, bearded and terrified faces of Valgius and Thorius. The two were crouched over a smoking, low-flaming fire at the base of the great trash heap.

"Quintus Valgius and Marcus Thorius," I shouted as one of my men doused the fire with a bucket of water, "in the name of the Senate and People of Rome, I arrest you! Come with me to the praetor." I had hoped they would resist, but they broke down in tears and supplications. Disgusted, I turned to my centurion.

"Burrus, don't let the men kill them. They must be tried."

"Damned shame, that," the gray old soldier grumbled. "My boy's with the Tenth in Gaul, and these traitors want to stir up trouble there, getting the barbarians to murder Romans in their sleep."

"Nevertheless," I said, "they are citizens and must be tried first."

Burrus brightened. "Well, they ought to make a good public show, anyway, perhaps something with leopards." As we walked to the basilica where arrestees were being kept, the vigiles argued over the best way to put the fire-raisers to death. Every groan of terror from the bearded ones came to my ears as the songs of Orpheus.

But amid all of this exhilaration, there was a darker side. Catilina had joined Manlius in the area of Picenum, and he had gathered a credible military force, mostly Sullan veterans and other discontented soldiers left over from various wars, along with people from the municipia and a surprising number of wellborn young men who left Rome to join him, scenting an opportunity for quick advancement.

Darkest of all were certain events in Rome. I have mentioned the lack of provision for arresting numbers of felons. There was a similar problem when it came to putting highborn men or holders of high office into custody. In the past, when serious perfidy was detected in such a person, he was given opportunity to slink from the city in disgrace and go into exile. This was different. Men who planned the violent overthrow of the state could not be allowed to leave and join their leader. The highest of the conspirators were delivered to the praetors , who kept them under guard in their own homes.

Since Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura was a praetor himself, Cicero personally arrested him and led him by the hand to the Temple of Concord, where he and the other leaders were to be tried. There Cicero argued that the leaders of the insurrection should be put to death immediately. There were some who protested that the Senate had no authority to try citizens, and that this could only be done by a duly constituted court. Cicero argued that the state of emergency forbade this, and that the sooner they were killed, the sooner the rebellion would collapse.

Caesar rose and spoke forcefully against any such course of action. He said that it ill-befitted Roman statesmen to act in the heat of passion. These were excellent sentiments, but they caused word to spread that he was involved with the conspiracy, or was at least a sympathizer. He was threatened by the mob as he left the temple.

Cato, naturally enough, called for execution. That was just the sort of action that appealed to him: simple, brutal and direct. Many men, especially Cato himself, believed that because he led an upright life of virtue and austerity, he must be right. In any case he spoke eloquently, and it may have been his speech that swayed the Senate to its final decision. Before sunset on that day, Lentulus, Cethegus and several others were taken to the prison beneath the Capitol and there were strangled by the public executioner. Richly as they deserved this fate, these executions were not constitutional and when the excitement and hysteria were over, people understood that they had set a fearsome precedent. Then men who had called for the blood of the conspirators called as loudly for Cicero's exile.

Other ugly incidents abounded. Men saw a chance to implicate their enemies, and did so forthwith. Luckily, except for his haste to dispose of the high-ranking conspirators, Cicero stayed calm and disposed of most of these spurious accusations with his withering sarcasm. A man named Tarquinius, captured on his way to join Catilina, claimed that he had been given a message of encouragement by Crassus to deliver to Catilina. Cicero refused to countenance the accusation, although he was happy enough that some doubt was cast upon Crassus's loyalty. In later times, Crassus claimed that Cicero had put Tarquinius up to this accusation, but I never believed it.

Catulus and Piso, bitter enemies of Caesar, tried to bribe the Allobroges and others to implicate Caesar in the conspiracy. Caesar's eloquent speech in protest of the death sentence for the conspirators lent credence to this accusation, but once again Cicero refused to recognize mere word-of-mouth accusations.

Was Caesar involved? He was certainly capable of it, but I do not think that his defense of the conspirators was evidence. Throughout his career, Caesar was happy to kill droves of barbarians, but he was always reluctant to execute citizens. His clemency was a byword, sometimes used in derision by enemies who at first thought him to be softhearted. In the end, it was his undoing. When a later conspiracy ended in his assassination, many of the conspirators were men he had spared when they were within his power and he had good reason to execute them. I do not think that Caesar was especially merciful. It was just his way of showing contempt for his enemies and confidence in his own powers. He was always a vain man.

Various of the magistrates with imperium were directed to deal with the enemy outside of Rome. Complications were added by the fact that it was the end of the year and some magistrates would be stepping down while others would be assuming office. Cicero's brother Quintus, for instance, was a praetor-elect, and he was sent to deal with the Catilinarians in Bruttium. By the time he got there, he would have his full powers. Caius Antonius Hibrida, waiting near Picenum, still had imperium as Consul, and he was alerted to the Catilinarian menace. The Praetor Metellus Celer was to march north with an army. Since Antonius was taking Macedonia, and Cicero had refused proconsular command, Celer had been given Cisalpine Gaul. The campaign would be merely part of his march to his province. The Praetor Pompeius Rufus was sent to Capua, to watch for Catilinarian subversion among the gladiator's schools there. Ever since Spartacus we have been nervous about a rebellion of gladiators, and in those days most of the schools were in Capua. Campania was the home of the gladiatorial cult. Actually, except when discharging their duties in the amphitheater or when hired as bullies for politicians, gladiators are usually the mildest of men. The fear was constant, though.

The Praetor-elect Bibulus was sent to smash the Catilinarians among the Paeligni, which required only a small force of men. The Paeligni had not amounted to much for quite some time, although they made a show of independence up in their mountains.

Much of this, you understand, I heard secondhand or read about later. As a mere quaestor, I was not yet a full member of the Senate, and so I did not hear all these speeches nor take part in the debates. I was kept too busy with my city patrols to do more than catch up on proceedings at the bathhouses frequented by Senators.

Even then, I think, I was half-aware that I was seeing the death throes of the old Republic.

I was in at the kill, although I had no desire to be. It was the next year, and the new Consuls were in power. Cicero was already in trouble, with his opponents calling for his impeachment for condemning the Catilinarians to death. Nobody questioned the justice of his action, only its legality.

The tribunes Nepos and Bestia had introduced a law calling for the Senate to summon Pompey from Asia to deal with Catilina, but that was a vain hope. Cicero had laid his groundwork too well. It was obvious to everyone that the various magistrates authorized to deal with the Catilinarians piecemeal would settle the problem long before Pompey could make an appearance.