Questions about Catilinarian conspiracy
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What was the Catilinarian conspiracy and when did it happen?
The Catilinarian conspiracy was an attempted coup by Lucius Sergius Catilina to seize the Roman consulship by force in 63 BC. After losing the consular election for the third time, Catiline assembled a coalition of disaffected senators, indebted veterans, and dispossessed farmers to overthrow the sitting consuls Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius Hybrida. The plot was exposed by Cicero in November 63 BC and ended with Catiline's defeat and death at the battle of Pistoria in early January 62 BC.
How did Cicero discover the Catilinarian conspiracy?
Cicero first heard rumours of the plot from a woman named Fulvia in the autumn of 63 BC. Marcus Licinius Crassus then provided the first concrete evidence on the 18th or the 19th of October, handing over letters describing plans to massacre prominent citizens. Reports of armed men gathering in Etruria corroborated the letters, and the senate declared a state of emergency and passed the senatus consultum ultimum authorising the consuls to act.
Who were the main conspirators in the Catilinarian conspiracy?
The inner circle included Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, a former consul expelled from the senate for immorality in 70 BC; Gaius Cornelius Cethegus, a Sertorian sympathiser; and Publius Autronius Paetus, whose consular election victory in 66 BC had been annulled after a bribery conviction. Other participants included Lucius Cassius Longinus, Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, and a wider group of dispossessed veterans and failed political candidates.
Why were the Catilinarian conspirators executed without trial?
Cicero had been empowered by the senate's senatus consultum ultimum to take whatever steps were necessary to protect the state. After the Allobroges provided evidence and the prisoners confessed, the senate debated their fate in the Temple of Concord. Julius Caesar proposed imprisonment, but Cato the Younger's speech in favour of immediate execution carried the vote. Cicero later justified the executions by pointing to the senate's advice, though he held no formal legal immunity for the action.
What happened to Cicero after the Catilinarian executions?
Cicero was initially hailed as pater patriae, father of the fatherland, but faced political backlash for executing citizens without trial. His valedictory speech at the close of 63 BC was vetoed by two tribunes. In 58 BC, the tribune Publius Clodius Pulcher passed a law banishing anyone who had executed a citizen without trial, and Cicero fled to Greece. He was recalled to Rome the following year at Pompey's request.
How reliable are the ancient sources on the Catilinarian conspiracy?
Most classicists accept that the conspiracy occurred broadly as described, but the two main sources, Cicero's Catilinarian orations and Sallust's Bellum Catilinae, are openly hostile to Catiline. Cicero's orations were published around 60 BC partly to defend him from political criticism. Sallust, who was not in Rome in 63 BC, shaped his account around a broader thesis of Roman moral decline. Scholars agree that the threat posed by the conspiracy was exaggerated in both accounts.