The Ancients - The Catiline Conspiracy

Episode Date: August 2, 2026

In 63 BC, Rome faced a conspiracy that threatened to tear the Roman Republic apart. At its centre stood two figures: Marcus Tullius Cicero, the grand old orator of Rome and Lucius Sergius Catilina, accused of plotting violence, rebellion and the overthrow of Rome’s political order. But was the danger as great as Cicero claimed?In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Catharine Edwards to uncover the truth behind the Catiline Conspiracy. Did Cicero save the Roman Republic in his finest hour, or did he exaggerate the threat to destroy a political rival? Join us to discover the story behind one of ancient Rome’s most notorious political crises.MORE:CiceroListen on AppleListen on Spotify Battle of Mutina: Cicero's Fight for the Roman RepublicListen on AppleListen on SpotifyThe Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch here: @TheAncientsPodcastPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Tim Astall. Produced by Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. Marcus Tullius Cicero, the grand old orator of Rome. And in the year 63 BC, he achieved his lifelong ambition, the consulship, Rome's highest elected office. But before the year was over, his career, and perhaps his life, hung by a thread. Rome was gripped by what became known as the Catalan conspiracy, so-called after its most prominent ringleader Lucius Sergius Catalina. According to Cicero, it was an existential threat to the Republic, violence in the streets, unrest across Italy, and an insurrection plot to overthrow the Roman state. But was it really, or did Cicero exaggerate the danger to cement his own legacy?

Today, I'm joined by renowned classicist Professor Catherine Edwards to sift through the fact and the fiction. Was this Cicero's finest hour? Did he save Rome and its famed Republican institutions from the assertion collapse? Or has Cateline been the subject of one of history's most brutal posthumous hit jobs? This is the story of one of Rome's most famous political conspiracies. Catherine, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I'm very excited to have you here. I can't believe we haven't had you on the show before, but better late than never, and you've got a new book all about Cicero. And this particular event from Cicero's life, the Catalanian conspiracy, or the Catalan conspiracy, it feels like

it has it all. It's got backstabbing, brilliant speeches, schemings, unrest, and this large-than-life figure of Cicero right at its heart. It's a fascinating episode of Roman history. It is indeed a completely fascinating episode, and it's kind of a, it's a sort of, in some ways, the high point of Cicero's own life. But it's also, it lays the seeds for terrible things that happened to him later. It's a moment of crisis, it seems, for the Roman Republic. And it's not just, you know, the sort of larger than life figure of Cicero whom we meet in this year, dominating events. There's also, of course, the man after whom the conspiracy is named its leader, Cateline. And then we also have a significant contributors to the debate, Julius Caesar and Cato.

So, you know, a lot of major Republican figures here. So it's a big cuss. And this is Cato the Younger, not Cato the Elder. It is indeed Cato the Younger who is descended from Cato the Elder and very proud of that fact. But absolutely, Cato the Younger. He's not shouting, Carthage must be destroyed. Anyways.

And why is this episode in 63 BC? why is this such a big event in Cicero's story? This is a big event in Cicero's story for a variety of reasons, partly because Cicero himself never shut up about it. He was the most kind of eloquent, wordy man of his time, and he left an enormous legacy of his own speeches as well as other writings, his letters, treaties.

So he chose to preserve the speeches that he gave as consul for the year 63 BCE, who is kind of Rome's chief executive officer, or one of the two. And a couple of years after his consulship, he deliberately kind of wrote up these speeches and put them into circulation as models for young orators in years to come. So he was kind of setting himself up as a kind of a model speechmaker, and that was a tremendously successful move

because he's actually had that role kind of for hundreds of years, thousands of years indeed, since his lifetime and the speeches of Cicero have been studied, particularly the Catalanarans erasions, by, you know, aspiring orators of many stripes. I didn't realise that Cicero put his speeches into public circulation as well. It gives you more of an insight into the man and how he wanted to be remembered. Absolutely. Now, it wasn't unheard of for Roman politicians to put their speeches into circulation. the elder Cato indeed had done the same thing. Also, a man of somewhat similar background to Cicero in some ways.

But it was a very deliberate move on Cicero's part. He was really curating his legacy from very early on. He made comparisons between himself and the Athenian orator Demosthenes. He made these comparisons repeatedly. And then, fortunately, for Cicero, the kind of comparison was then picked up on by Plutarch, when he did his parallel lives of Greeks and Romans, you know, 100 plus years later, he paired Cicero and Demosthenes. So, you know, that aspiration on Cicero's part was, you know, kind of pursued and embedded in the tradition by Plutarch. And you mention how I'm going to

read from here, so I don't butcher the quote either. Of those who lived in Roman antiquity, Cicero is the one about whom most is known. And is that largely because of his his own work surviving. You mentioned Plutarch as well, but is it largely because he wrote so much and it has survived down to us? Yes, I mean, there's sort of two factors there. There's the profusion of his writings, many speeches, but also really unusually and interestingly, Cicester's letters, he was a great letter writer. I mean, letter writing was an enormously important part of the lives of the Rome's political elite at a time when they're governing a huge empire, kind of staying in touch with one another is really important. Sissera is a kind of

master letter writer. He is absolutely brilliant at writing letters. And after he died, a collection was made of his letters, in fact, multiple collections. There was a collection of his letters to his friend Atticus, who was a close friend for, you know, really throughout his adult life, although the letters to Atticus don't really get going until the 60s. So earlier on, we don't have letters between Cicero and Atacus. So it's like 450 odd of those letters. Then there's another collection which is Cicero's letters to friends. They're sometimes called Adfamiliare's.

That also includes letters to family members and indeed, very interestingly, to his secretary, his sometimes slave and then freedman, Tyro. And many people think that it was Tyro himself who edited these letters after Cistero. staff. So there's those two big collections and the collection of letters to friends also includes some letters addressed to Cicero by other people, people like Julius Caesar, Cato, you know, we've got their letters to Cicero. And then there's a smaller collection of letters that Cicero wrote to his brother, Quintus, who is an important figure in his life. And then some fragments. In antiquity, there were other collections of letters by Cicero in circulation. So,

we know that he wrote letters to Octavian, who later became Augustus. Very little of those who survived. Probably everybody involved wanted to suppress those, that one can imagine. And actually, there are also some letters to Brutus, one of the men who was responsible for the death of Julius Caesar, is a good friend of Cicero, letters to Marcus Brutus. Some of those are of dubious authenticity, but others are kind of more, more, securely attributed to Cicero. So this huge corpus of Ciceroonian letters that really lets to see a man embedded in all these different social networks, and particularly in letters to Atticus,

we get Ciccores kind of in the moment reflections on everything that's going on in Rome. And that includes a huge range of things. I mean, we get Atticus looks after Cicero's finances. So we get Cicero's money worries. We get family anxieties because Atticus is, sister is married to Cicero's brother. So they have all this kind of family stuff they talk about as well. But I suppose the most striking thing is the kind of the constant speculation, gossip, reflection on what's going on in the political arena, trying to work out, you know, what other people's motives are. Cicero shares his anxieties about all sorts of things in the letters to Atticus. And I think that's one of the things that really has always drawn people to Cicero, is

that we get, yes, we get these sort of rather bombastic speeches, which are powerful in their own way, and Cicero's been pretty consistently admired as a successful orator. But we also get this other side of Cicero in the letters, which is so fascinating. And sometimes people kind of have criticised Cicero's character. When Cicero's fortunes were kind of, I suppose, much of Cicero's writing was kind of,

not really known in the kind of later Middle Ages, but with Petrarch in the sort of beginnings of the Italian Renaissance, you get this kind of rediscovery of Cicero. And Petrarch found a manuscript of Cicero's letters in the library of the cathedral chapter in Verona, and he was so thrilled because he was a big fan of Cicero. He thought, fine, oh, I'm going to read Cicero, the letter's amazing. He read these letters, and he thought, oh, my God, I can't believe it.

Here's this guy, I really admired him. I've been reading his moral philosophy, and now I'm reading his letters, and he keeps changing his mind about everything. He's human. He's very human. And on the one hand, he then goes down massively in Petrarch's estimation, and Petrarch actually writes these letters to Cisterra, going, why on earth did you support Julius Caesar and, you know, taking him to task?

Or why did you support Mark Anthony? Or, sorry, why did you get into conflict with Mark Anthony? But at the same time, there is this sort of almost this recognition of Cicero's humanity, his kind of human failings, which I think have made him, I mean, he provokes a lot of criticism for his character, if you like, but there's a strong sense that we kind of, you know, have access to his character. I mean, absolutely. And in regards then to the Catalan conspiracy event, which we're going to focus on. So we have those big, bombastic speeches, which we do about to explore with the story. But I'm guessing another source, do you get him mentioning Catiline in their letters that he has as well. So you get a bit of an interesting different side that we can. and also explore that, you know, Cicero in the letters versus Cicero and the bombastic speeches? Well, one of the things that's quite interesting about the year 63 and a bit frustrating in some ways is that we don't have any letters between Cicero and Atticus for that year when Cicero was consul,

and very likely Atticus was in Rome, so they didn't need to write to one another. At other times, Atticus was often away for long periods, and that's when we get these kind of very detailed regular exchanges of correspondence, not that we ever hear from Atticus, I might say. But to rephrase, we don't have letters from 63 BC when Cicero actually is consul. However, we do have quite a lot of kind of later reflections on the events of that year in Cicero's letters to Atticus, and particularly his worries about how other people are judging his actions.

Right. So it sounds like we do have a bit of a bias problem regardless, though, in that if our main source for this event, Cicero is our main source for this story. Cicero is our main source for this story. we do also have another quite detailed and pretty much contemporary account, which is Salas' account of the War Against Catalina. Salas was a generation younger than Cicero, but he was very familiar with many of the key players in the events of 63.

He was a close associate of Julius Caesar for a while. So he too was a kind of, you know, a senior room politician, although he'd step back from politics by the time he wrote this account of the Catalinarian conspiracy in the 40s BCE. And he gives us a rather different take on the events of 63 from the version that we get in Cicero. So that's quite interesting. And you mentioned, of course, so 63 BC, BC is the year that we're going to be focusing on.

And this is the year when Cicero becomes consul. And the position of consul, basically the pious position that an elite Roman could get to in in the late Roman Republic at that time. Can you briefly explain, I know it's a massive story, but Cicero's road to that point. Has he been active in the political sphere a long time to get to this big moment in his story? It's hard to gauge exactly when Cicero has set his sights on the consulship,

but he was very clearly an ambitious young man and wanted to make a name for himself in the law courts at an early age. is clearly a talented orator. He had some challenges to overcome because, you know, when he was in his late teens, early 20s, Rome was driven by the civil war between Marius and Sulla and then Sulla's dictatorship, which meant that, you know, there wasn't a lot going on in the forum and law courts.

But after the sort of restoration of order, Sulla's dictatorship and then the restoration of sort of traditional... government formed largely in the wake of that. Yes, Cicero does manage to pursue a pretty standard political career in some ways. I mean, one of the things that's really important to appreciate about Cicero is that he doesn't come from a grand senatorial family. He has no senatorial ancestors. And that marks him out as different from the vast majority of the Senate and from virtually everybody who gets elected to be consul. So that, that, rode from a family with no

senatorial ancestors. I mean, they were clearly very wealthy, the Cicero's and quite well connected as far the new influential people in Rome. Cicero was sort of apprenticed, Cicero and his brother, indeed, were apprenticed to some of Rome's leading orators in their youth.

So we have Cicero, who's clearly very talented, and a persuasive speaker who kind of, and also a keen student, not just oratory, but also philosophy. And he stands for election to the office of Quista, the sort of most junior office that entitles you to a seat in the Senate. And once he's been

elected Cuisher, that's a role that only lasts for one year. He's Cuisher serving in Sicily, where he gains valuable experience, but he also has got this seat in the Senate. And then that kind of, it really makes him part of that. hugely influential body that kind of uses its authority, if you like, in theory at least. He's got his first step on the ladder kind of thing. He's got his first step on the ladder. Exactly so. And later on, he's elected Prater. He makes a real name for himself with his speeches in the law courts. So the speech that he gives prosecuting Gaius Varies in 70 BCE is an absolutely crucial moment for kind of making his name as an orator.

But it's really interesting that, you know, there had been other men of, I suppose, non-senatorial background, making it to the top of the tree previously. And one of those came from the same small town as Cicero, Arpena, Gaius Marius. But Marius had, you know, a generation earlier, Marius had made his fortune as a hugely successful general in the military sphere. Cicero was, I mean, he did have military experience in his years. youth, he'd served under Pompeius Strabo fighting in the kind of civil war, first of all, the war against the Allies and then civil war period. But that was not really the sphere in which he excelled. And instead, he really asserted the importance of the role of the orator

in society and the orator as someone who provides leadership and provides ethical leadership and guidance for the state. So that was how he kind of, you know, presented his contribution and what qualified him to hold highest office in Rome. He's a brilliant speaker. He's worked his way up the ladder. As you say, Cuyster, Alpreda,

all of these positions. And as you say, that also think he's not from a senatorial background. He's rich, but he's a new man, a novice homo, as they say. So getting the consulship then in 63 BC, I mean, that's a big deal for him to have earned it. and the power of his words, rather than the power of money by other figures, like the actual crassers.

But we've painted the scene for Cicero at that time. But let's introduce this figure of Catteline. So who is this big rival, Cateline? Okay, so Catteline is pretty much contemporary with Cicero, maybe a couple of, probably a couple of years old. We don't know for sure. He comes from quite a different background. He comes from a really old patrician family. and the patricians in Rome were people who claimed that their ancestors had been in the Senate

in the time of Romulus, Rome's mythical founder. And they went back a long way. And they have, you know, they're very special religious roles, particularly that patricians are entitled to hold that other people aren't. So he's fancy, he's very grand. He's also very ambitious. And he holds various offices. However, he also gets himself into hot water in various ways. So he has, you know, after he'd been preter, he went off to be a Roman provincial governor in Africa and the Roman province of Africa.

But he was, there were various embassies that came from the provincial subjects. They're complaining about his behaviour as governor. And he was prosecuted for extortion on his return to Rome. and that was by no means the only court case that brought against him. There was also a scandal about, you know, had he or had he not seduced one of the Vestal Virgins, which was hugely scandalous. Now, he was prosecuted for a variety of different crimes and always acquitted. So, now, prosecution, Roman politicians prosecuted one another constantly,

as it's a very litigious society. So, you know, in some ways it's not. hugely unusual, but Catalan does perhaps stand out as someone who attracted a lot of scandal. And he seems to have been quite a spendthrift. Now, so by the time we get to 63, Catalan appears to have enormous debts. He is by no means the only Roman politician to be in this situation. Julius Caesar had huge debts by this date as well. So, and we can perhaps come back later to the issue of debt. But Cataline was someone who had, well, he'd wanted to stand for the consulship previously,

but because he was about to be, in the process of being prosecuted, he'd not really been able to be a candidate. So he stood for the consulship in the summer of 64 against Cicero. So he was one of the seven candidates for the consulship. Cicero, a guy called Gaius Antonius and Catteline, were the three favourites. if you like. Okay, right. So Catiline seems to have spent a lot more money trying to get himself elected, but there were various doubts about Catalines' reliability and his interest in using violence to gain his ends and the possibility that he might actually want to pass some rather

radical measures such as the abolition of debt. And in the end, it seems that Cicero was able to get the support of senior senators for his own candidature. So Cicero was elected, came top of the ballot. Gaya Zantanus came second by a fairly significant distance. And then Cateline was third, and third gets you nowhere in Roman politics. So he spent a load of money, which he didn't have, which he'd borrowed, and he was really in a difficult situation. So Cataline is, he's a failed Roman politician.

He's one of the conspicuous failures. But he's by no means the only one. There were quite a lot of people around who had spent a lot of money trying to get elected and been unsuccessful. And because they were unsuccessful, that meant they would not go on to hold a provincial governor position following their year of office, which was often regarded as an excellent means to make a fortune back again with which you can then repay all the people you borrowed money from to get elected.

Gosh. Pulling no punches as well by labelling him a failed politician. And do you think even in 64 BC, I guess we don't know much about Cicero's previous relationship with Catiline, but during that election campaign, can you imagine that Cicero was actively pushing others who weren't voting for him to vote for Gaius Antonius to make sure that Catalan did not get the consulship? Well, I mean, actually Cicero attacks Gaius Antonius as well. Oh, okay.

And he really plays on everyone's anxieties after the slave rebellion led by Sparscus. Sparskus, okay, yeah. Which kind of rumbled on for quite some time between 73 and 71. There's a lot of anxiety. So the sense that Catalan and perhaps Gaius Antonius too might result to violence or something that Cisteros seems to have kind of played on in his speech. But it was really Cateline he went for. He seems to have brought up all sorts of stories about, you know, incest with his sister,

murder of family members, the appalling way he'd behaved during the sullen prescriptions when Cateline was on the side of Sulla and actually carried out various executions, supposedly. Now, how much we should believe of any of this, is not entirely clear. We also have the problem that this speech that Cicero made as a candidate for the consulship survives only in fragments

or reports that other people, references in other writers. So, you know, we're not entirely to what he said, and what he did say may not be entirely, you know, a lot of that may be kind of embroidered, fabricated. I think we do need to bear in mind when we think about Roman oratory, it is also about kind of entertaining your audience

and evoking these extraordinarily vivid vignettes of, you know, conveying the terrible character of your opponent, the kind of strict truth is quite often a casualty, one suspects, in these situations. So, you know, the extremely toxic family situation of Catiline may be a significant exaggeration on Cicero's part. Well, we're now delve into what happens the next year and Catalan coming back right after this. what's this big moment in 63 BC that sets it all off again? It's interesting to speculate exactly when Cicero starts to kind of get a sense of something funny going on. But clearly it's important that Catalan is having another go at standing for the consulship.

So he puts himself forward as a candidate in the summer of 63, hoping to secure election for the consulship of 62. So he tries again. He tries again. He tries again. However, there are all sorts of stories about how Catalan is going to resort to violence even in the course of the elections. And the elections themselves are postponed. There are stories going around about what Catalina's been saying to his supporters. He has a rally in his house where he says, you know, the wealthy governing class of Rome are kind of, you know, choking everyone else to death.

We're all laden with debt, and there they are living in their grandhouses, and it's got to stop. So there are these stories going around about Catalan planning. If he doesn't get elected consul, what's he going to do? There are all these stories going around. Partly these stories must play a role in Cateline failing to get elected, because his name is being tarnished with all sorts of stories. but the consequence of his not being elected is that he is in a completely desperate situation. He's taken on even more debt and what is he going to do now? And now, according to Cicero and Salas as well, you know, this is the point at which,

so he's already kind of tried to use violence to affect the outcome of the elections. That hasn't worked. Instead, we have the elections of Silanas and Morena. who are now consuls elect for the year 62. And at this point, we get Cateline clearly, well, according to Cicero, turning to violence to get his way. So he's staging a coup to make himself consul in the place of these men who've been elected. So, but exactly what's going on is really, really hard to work out

because we have Cicero's very tendentious account of it in the first speech against Catalan, which he delivers in possibly, probably the 8th of November. And he kind of gives us a summary of what's happened in previous months. And then we also have Salas' account of what's going on. But again, you know, the sources that Salas are drawing on are not necessarily very clear. Now, some historians would say, actually maybe Catalan didn't even think of turning to violence,

until he's attacked in the Senate by Cicero in early November. So much later on, several months after his failure in the elections in the summer. Well, the elections themselves had been, because of the potential violence, the stories around violence associated with the elections, the elections normally happen in July. They may have been postponed to September. Even that is not entirely clear. But the elections finally happen.

Catalina is defeated. And then, you know, he seems to have these supporters. And Cicero claims he's got a network of a network of his. informants all over Italy who are feeding back to him, you know, accounts of what's going on. And the most worrying and obvious thing is sort of gathering of armed men in Faisuli in Etruria. And these men are under the command of a man called Manlius, who had been a centurion in the army of Salah, was clearly an experienced military man, and is himself, you know, a bit desperate. So we have this sort of quite complicated situation of a whole number of different groups of people who are feeling really disaffected and ready for revolt because they're so desperate one way or another.

Now, some of these groups are people whose lands were taken from them by Sala in order to give land allotments to his veteran soldiers. some of them are veteran soldiers who've kind of failed to make a success of their farming. We have another group who are descendants of individuals who were proscribed by Sala. That's to say, you know, they were made outlaws, they could be killed with impunity, and they and their descendants lost the right to participate in politics in Rome. So the proscribed are feeling this huge sense of resentment and really wanting some kind of revolution to turn things around and offer them a way back into Roman politics. And that had been a kind of a real issue for some time.

And the resentment of the sons of the prescribed was something that Cicero and others were aware of to a degree. And so had those people been the ones who have been championing Catiline in the previous election or are these people who are disillusioned off their own back and they're kind of, they're gathering together regardless? It's hard to say exactly who Cateline supporters were. in the elections that took place in 64 and indeed in 63, obviously he had some supporters, but not enough to get him over the line. The proscribed are not able to vote because they're still suffering from this ban,

but they're itching to get back into, to reclaim their rights, reclaim their property and all the rest of it. So there are all sorts of people who are feeling disaffected. And the urban populace of Rome is a really important group as well. I mean, we have, you know, Roma has this growing population. Lots of people, Salas talks about all the people who come in to Rome looking for work. Because their farm has failed in the countryside, or they've lost their farm, they come to Rome looking for work, and there's not very much work in Rome.

Or it's very seasonal, it's very hard to make a living. So there's a lot of people who are feeling very precarious. in one way or another. And people, many of these people have debts. So Catalines' proposal to cancel debts is an enormously appealing one for many different groups for different reasons. So it's appealing to those aristocratic politicians who've really got themselves into debt trying to get elected to high office.

But it's also really appealing to people much kind of lower down the social scale, if you like, who, you know, have maybe got to. into debt, you know, just to get enough to eat. So it's kind of, you know, a whole lot of different people who are looking for big changes. And there are rumours that Cataline 2 may bring about prescriptions where you confiscate the lands of your outlawed enemies and redistribute them to your supporters. So, you know, that could be further opportunities for people who are feeling very marginalised and resentful. I mean, one of the things we have to remember about Rome in this period is the massive, massive inequality that is becoming ever more conspicuous.

And that's one of the things that's so interesting about Salas' account of the Catalinarian conspiracy is that there's actually quite a lot of similarity between the kinds of observations that Catalan makes about the terrible situation that they're in Rome with these rich people with their huge houses and their fish ponds and everything else. So Catalan gives a speech in Salas kind of drawing a... attention to the houses of the rich on the one hand and then the wretched living conditions of the poor on the other. But also, Salas himself, in his introduction to his account of the conspiracy, makes the same point. So there's a recognition in Salas, and this is why I think

Salas' account is such an interesting kind of compliment to Cicero's speeches. In Salas' account, there's a recognition of the serious problems of inequality and the justifiable. And the justifiable resentments of many different groups. I mean, Salas is also critical, and he does talk about, you know, all the dregs of the countryside are finding their way to Rome and that kind of thing. But at the same time, you know, he is very critical of the kind of Roman, I suppose, the successful members of the Roman elite and how they have just enriched themselves and are concerned about nothing beyond kind of, you know, their own fortunes.

So although Castellin loses the election, as you mentioned, his policies are popular with lots of people. And as he mentioned, you have that massing together of a group of armed men north of Roman, Tuscany, in Etruria, Faizuli. As this is happening over the summer in the autumn of 63 BC, do you think Cataline is seeing this? And do you think he's involved with this buildup? Is he thinking this is actually a good show of force to show the people that my policies are actually popular or, I mean, what do you think? Is he actually planning an insurrection with these men? What do you think?

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. It's kind of at what point do Catalina and Manlius really kind of... Because we think they are working together. Cicero clearly thinks they're working together. And he sort of intercepted some messages in October that suggest, they're kind of anonymous messages saying there's an anonymous messages saying there's an anonymous message to Krasa saying, you know, get out of Rome because, you know, Catalines planning to bring about a revolution. So, how reliable is this? Who knows? But certainly that fuels

Cicero's suspicion that Catalina and Manlius are kind of collaborating. And there are stories about armed gatherings elsewhere in Italy as well. So it all feels quite uncomfortable. But I think one of the challenges or one of the frustrations for Cicero is trying to find some actual proof that Catiline is really linked to these armed gatherings elsewhere in Italy. It's not until quite late on that he actually, you know, achieves that when he manages to get these Gauls, the Alabrogos, who's there on an embassy to Rome. And of course, the Gauls as well are really suffering from debt. They've borrowed loads of money in order to pay their taxes to Rome. And the reason these Gauls have come to visit to the Senate is that they want remission of their debts. And when we're talking about the Gauls here, we're not talking across the Alps in modern-day France.

These are Gauls who are in northern Italy who have come under the control of the Romans, or are we talking a bit further afield and they're being forced to pay money almost as tribute to Rome? Yes. So these are, the Albregues are the other side of the Alps. Oh, they are the other side. Okay. My apologies, yeah. Yes. Yes, because at one point, Cicero says, you know, the conspiracy has spread over the Alps. So the Aliburgis then have sent their embassy to Rome.

They want support from the Senate because they are feeling really up against it. They've got an oppressive governor and these Roman money lenders are oppressing them as well. So they want, you know, the idea of cancelling debts is very appealing for them. And initially, they are quite drawn to support Catalan. and they think, well, that could work out quite well for us to have debts cancelled. But they also have cold feet. And they, in the end, someone who is kind of connected to one of the Gaelic ambassadors persuades them to help with a plot to secure written evidence of the complicity of Catiline.

Then we get the letters. So these Alibroghs, the Gauls, are persuaded to get some letters that they can then take home to their compatriots and say, look, we've got a guarantee from Cateline. And then there's also a letter from the conspirators in Rome to Cataline, who's by then in Etruria. And by this point, then Cesar actually has this written evidence. But when he makes his first speech to the Senate, at that point he doesn't have written evidence of Cataline's involvement. with these other armed groups. So, you know, that's, I think, where scholars can take quite different views about whether, how far Catiline really was working with Manlius and other groups elsewhere in Italy.

Because Castline leaving Rome, I mean, that feels like an important moment. And can we get to how that happens? Because is there a couple of events before this where Cicero is getting more rumblings, more thoughts that actually Catiline could be involved with these. these armed men, or at least what we hear in the surviving sources, because what's this mention of a woman called Fulvia being an informant? Yes, okay. So Fulvia plays a key role, really, in the discovery of the conspiracy.

She is an aristocratic Roman woman. She's having a relationship with a man called Quintus Curious, who had once been a senator, but like quite a few others, had been expelled from the Senate in the year 70 for a variety. I mean, senators were expelled for a variety of reasons, but it might be to do with not having sufficient wealth to support their position in the Senate, or it might be to do with their poor moral behavior. But it was, you know, a bit catastrophic, actually, for a Roman politician to be expelled from the Senate.

So Quint is curious, there's a slightly desperate man. He's lost status. And he's part of the conspiracy. He's really drawn to Catalans' conspiracy. So Filvi is having this relationship with him. And her suspicions are aroused because, according to Salas and other sources, previously, Curis had been very mean and kind of never bought her presence. But then he started getting much more generous.

And so she gets suspicious. It's curious, what is going on? And Curis reveals to her, you know, everything's going to change. It's all going to be so much better because we're going to have this revolution. and these awful upstarts like Cicero are going to be got rid of and we're going to have, you know, Catalan is going to be console and it will all be great. And so Fulvia is a bit doubtful about this and she communicates this information via, you know, intermediaries to Cicero. And gradually, Fulvia picks up more and more about what the conspirators are planning.

And one of the things that she seems to be the source for is, is a plan to assassinate Cicero. So the news leaks out that there's a gathering in the house of a man called Leica in the Sivemaker's street in Rome of Catalan and his supporters. And a plan is made for two men to go to Cicero's house, pretending to be about to offer him, you know, greetings of a morning, a sort of standard Roman practice. But they're going to kill him. But Cicero gets. But Cisero gets wind of this and he prevents these two men from entering his house the next morning and foils their plot. But this is, you know, one of the things that he describes in very vivid detail in his speech, in his first speech against Cateline in the Senate about how he's been dodging multiple

attempts on his life by Cateline. Now, quite possibly Cataline did plan to kill Cicero. I mean, in a way, if he wanted to secure the consulship for himself, then that would be, you know, a plausible thing to do. And we should remember that political murder was by no means uncommon. In the decades, in the previous decades, we've had the prescriptions of Sulla. You know, we've had all sorts of terrible things happening in the city of Rome. But to kill a consul, Catherine, that's quite a big step. To kill a consul. Well, it is a big step to kill a consul. And who knows exactly what would have happened had the consul been killed.

but he wasn't. He foiled the attempt, if there was an attempt. But Cicero also started to make these really broad claims about how Catalan wanted to kill everybody in Rome so that he paints the picture of Catalan as planning a sort of complete bloodbath as a way to convince the rest of the Senate that proper action against Catline and his supporters needs to be taken. And at that time Castline is still in Rome, he hasn't left the city?

Yes, now that is pretty good thing. That's interesting. That's interesting, yes. Well, and I think the fact that Catalan is still in Rome is one of the reasons that some scholars will say, well, you know, was Cateline really planning violence at this point? So there's this meeting of the Senate in the Temple of Jupiter, Stato, probably on the 8th of November, where Cataline is there in attendance. And Cicry gives, you know, this sort of searing speech, which is then no. later as, or the version that survives, is known as the first speech against Cateline. And he really lays into him, you know, how long will you abuse our patience, Cateline, and he goes on and on at him about how everyone knows that he is planning terrible

things. And planning violence against the city, planning to set fire to the city, all these claims are made about what Cateline's planning. And yet you still, you know, have the effrontery to carry on sitting here. See how, you know, you've been isolated. Everyone's moved away from you So he paints this really vivid picture of Catalan sitting isolated on a bench in the Senate. Everyone else is kind of shrinking away from this terrible man. He's one of their own and yet is allegedly planning a coup against the Roman state. So what Cicero says is, you know, I have the authority to have you executed, which is rather a dubious claim. And he says, if I were you, Catalan, I would just go into exile.

So in some ways, I know Catalans retreat from Rome, which he seems to leave the night after that speech is given. And he goes off to Etruria and joins up with Manus at that point. Okay, now they finally. Okay, so now he's out in the open. I mean, in some ways, Cicester, you know, we'll see you leave the city and then we'll really know that you're in this conspiracy. And so in some ways, Cataline does kind of show he's right. except that, you know, we could also tell a bit of a different story about Cateline. If we think about Catalina as someone who feels actually completely scandalised that this jumped up new man from

Arpenaum has been elected consul when he feels it's, you know, he is a patrician and it's, you know, almost his entitlement to be elected consul. Cataline is, you know, one thing we should shouldn't forget about Catalina. He was actually a very successful military man. So he was, you know, admired for his incredible talents as a military leader. He was sort of tireless at the head of an army. He, you know, and he, we get these quotations or speeches attributed to Cateline in Salas' account, particularly, where, you know, he communicates to some of the other, you know, old established aristocrats in the Senate and says things like, you know, my dignity

has been affronted. I am, you know, I am, you know, this is, I'm claiming what is my right. You know, so that sort of sense that he deserved to be consul and Cistero didn't, and that he's kind of wants to write that wrong. But then he's also presenting himself as the champion of the oppressed, which is a somewhat kind of, you know, curious combination. Right, well, we'll get to the grand climax of this. conspiracy now that he's left Rome right after this. So we've kind of covered the story of those

earlier months in 63. You know, these groups of armed men outside of Rome, Manlius, for instance, in Tuscany, and these groups who support what Catalina was backing, the big question of how involved he was in wanting an insurrection. But now, with that damning speech by Cicero, and Cisero very much thinks he is keen on the insurrection. Cataline has left Rome, and he has for the first time he's now met up with Manlius and these forces north of Rome. And for Cicero, is this the proof that he was looking for me? What happens next? Well, it seems that there are still some doubters in the Senate about what Cateline's intentions really are.

And Caterline did have some supporters in the Senate, although Cicero would like us to believe he didn't. But he's kind of in touch with some of the more conservative figures like Catellus. He writes to Catchelor's kind of, you know, talk about his, Catalan writes to Catellus, justifying his actions. That's where we get this thing about his dignity being. And he's a conservative senator. Yes, he's a conservative senators. And there are all kinds of stories, actually, about senators who are quite in favor of Catalin, potentially,

and certainly at an earlier stage that perhaps even crass us. You know, the richest man in Rome had been backing Cataline, partly to get back at Pompey, one of those complicated bits of Roman politicking behind the scenes. And who knows whether Crasis was ever really a backer of Catline. But we now have this situation where, in a way, Cicero himself is apparently absolutely convinced that Catalan is a massive threat to Rome. And he, even in his first speech against Catalan, he aligns him with other individuals who've been seen as, you know, wanting to overturn the Roman state. Although, you know, historians might dispute his version of events.

But, you know, he says, oh, you know, he's like Gaius crackers or, you know, he'd been a revolutionary, supposedly revolutionary tribune back in 121 BCE and ended up being killed by, by, conservatives. And that was a very kind of controversial situation at the time. So Cicero, you know, having, Cicero claims that Catalan poses this terrible threat, but there's still plenty of people who are not totally convinced. And this is really why Cicero needs to get that written evidence that, you know, really is going to be damning. So, you know, when he's finally, you know, he's hatched this plot with the the Gaelic envoys and they have

got these letters he's then able to use the letters to implicate not just cash line but also various other individuals some of whom are actually in the Senate and the most senior of those is lentilla Sura

who is actually a preter for the year 63 so quite high up not concert, but still quite hard. Yes. Well, Lenny Lucero is a really interesting character. He had been expelled from the Senate in 70. He'd managed to kind of claw his way back. So this is his second time as Prater.

He'd got to be, you know, got to be Preta before and then been, you know, sort of got up the ladder and then like a snake of being kind of expelled from the Senate. You had to kind of go back to start again. So he'd managed to get back to being Prater. But clearly wasn't, you know, wasn't happy with the situation in Rome. and so he's the most senior of those who are who are allegedly involved in the conspiracy who stayed in Rome.

So Catalines left and gone to join Manlius. But there are these other guys who are in the city. And so while Cataline is off, you know, with his armed force in Tuscany, Cicero now has the issue of these letters that implicate these guys. and they are, the letters are kind of opened in the Senate in front of these individuals. And Cicero describes how guilty they look. You know, you can see they're guilty just by looking at their basis. And then he also says that they confessed.

Now, what they confessed to is not entirely clear. But, you know, we have these other guys, you know, including Roman senators, where there's written proof that they are involved in Catalans' conspiracy. So, you know, this is a very kind of scary situation. And a complicated situation. Complicated situation. But Cicero gets his way in that they are, does he get his way that they are, they are evidently found guilty of being conspirators?

Well, found guilty is an interesting way to put it, because they don't have a trial. And that is part of what makes this whole episode so problematic. We've got Roman citizens who are accused of involvement in a conspiracy. But these men in Rome have not been, you know, they've not been caught red-handed in anything like, you know, they're not kind of at the head of an armed force, you know, in Tuscany. That's, that's Catline. They are in the city, and allegedly one of them is found with a whole load of weapons in this house. But I mean, you know, they don't have a proper trial.

They are treated as if they are manifestly guilty by Cicero. And then we have this sort of big debate in the Senate about what to do with these manifestly guilty men. So Roman citizens is manifestly guilty accused of treason. And so Cicero, he goes big on this. He wants the worst penalty possible. Cicero wants the worst penalty possible. but he's by no means the only one. And I think one of the things that we need to appreciate

about this debate in the Senate is that there are plenty of people expressing different opinions. The majority of people are in favour of killing these guys. Oh, okay. So we have Cato the Younger, for instance, who gives a very strong speech in favor of putting them to death. Now, there are voices that speak in favor of not rushing into things

and most prominent among those at least according to Salas' account of the conspiracy is Julius Caesar and Julius Caesar says this is going to set a really dangerous precedent and we should really think very hard before we do something as drastic as this let's put them in prison for a while instead.

I mean I think part of the problem is normally when aristocratic Romans found guilty they are allowed to retreat into exile rather than facing capital punishment. So, but in this case, to allow these men to leave Rome, it would be almost, you know, to give them an obvious opportunity to just go and join forces with Cataline in Tuscany. So that's not really an option here.

Imprisonment is not a standard punishment in ancient Rome. So, but it's not entirely clear why it's not possible to, you know, keep them prison at least until Catalans been defeated in the field. That, you know, and that seems to be the kind of thing that Julia Caesar's talking about. But the strongest voices in the Senate are in favor of executing these men. And the Cicero does speak in favor of this, but he's not the only one. What really puts Cicero on the spot is that he's the consul. So the Senate can make a decision, but in a way that doesn't make it law.

So Cicero takes it upon himself to execute what he, or to carry out what is the decision of the Senate. But he kind of carries the can for that. So he as consul oversees, there are five men in total who are in this category. So they are in custody temporarily. And then he oversees their being marched up to the Mametine prison on the capital. line hill and then they go down into this horrible, dank prison, which Salas describes very vividly and that they're strangled to death. So these powerful Romans, who I've been in the Senate, are infamously strangled to death,

and Cicero is the one who effectively gave the orders for that to happen. He gave the orders for that to happen, and not only that, but he himself accompanied these men on their walk to the prison, and he put his hand on Lenthalus's shoulder. Lenthalus is the most senior of the group, the one who's preter for 63. Cicero puts his hand on his shoulder. So he's basically got him under arrest, marches him up to Mammatim prison

and witnesses the execution of the conspirators. Wow, Cicero, there you go. So that is what happens to the conspirators. They're executed, and Cicero is the man. very much behind it. We must wrap up also, though, the story of Cateline, because he is not there. He is out of Rome with Manlius,

and these armed men in Tuscany. They've got to figure out what's due to these guys as well. Yes, they have. And I mean, one of the, you know, one of the complicating factors, I think, with Cicero's speeches against Cataline is that, you know, most of his anger is directed against Catalan himself.

But as you say, Cataline is not among the group who get executed in Rome. off in Tuscany with his troops. And Cicero's colleague as consul, Gaius Antonius, is put at the head of an armed force and he goes off to Tuscany and actually Gaius Antonius himself has, um, is indisposed. So it's his deputy who leads, who leads the forces. And they, you know, Catalan's forces are massively outnumbered. Nevertheless, you know, it is really striking. No one defeat, no one deserts Catalan's cause. They fight on. They fight until, you know, they're, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're,

basically all dead on the battlefield. And at the forefront is Cateline himself. So in Salas Sakaa, which concludes with the death of Catline, we have this really almost tragic situation of Catline, in many ways a very talented, albeit kind of, you know, aristocrat gone wrong character, who's, you know, has this incredible capacity for leadership that he's put to perverted ends.

But we see an almost redemptive moment for him at the end because we can see how he's inspired loyalty and his followers and, you know, they have followed him to their deaths on the battlefield. They believed in his cause of insurrection,

whether it was largely just because you'll clear our debts, you might give us a new life or for whatever other reason. It's probably his military background as well. You know, he was able to kind of continue with the loyalty of those figures

even when it was very much against them. The whole state was against them, that idea. No, absolutely. Absolutely. So he's obviously quite charismatic and it's quite interesting. Many years later, when Cicero is defending a young friend of his, Cailius, it turns out that Kyleus himself had been for a while a follower of Cateline.

And in that speech in defense of Cailius in the mid-50s, Cicero actually says, well, of course Cateline was terribly charming and charismatic because he's trying to make excuses for Kailas, but the fact that Caius had actually followed Catiline for a while. So we don't get quite such a sort of, you know, Catline as a, as an evil incarnate in that particular context. Oh, yes, the Varel is a nice glimpse behind the curtain. Absolutely. Interesting. So that is the story of the Castline conspiracy. Doesn't involve Castline? And of course, Cicero is the figure who, you know, is is the man at the top during it and oversees the execution of these five conspirators,

which is such a big moment. How does this affect Cicero's career after that point? Is he hailed as a hero, the man who stopped this potential insurrection? Or is it less favourable for him? It's a pretty complicated story in what happens afterwards because some people hail Cicero as a hero. He is, you know, after the execution, he's kind of escorted by cheering crowds. He's hailed as Father of the Fatherland, you know. He's rescued Rome, and he presents himself as being Rome's savior.

He saved Rome from the threat of arson, whether Catalan ever really meant to burn down Rome, is a moot point. You know, he saved Rome, the Roman state. But already, you know, even before the end of December, he's being challenged. one of the tribunes prevents Cicero from making his speech that a consul normally makes on laying down office on the grounds that Cicero has executed Roman citizens without trial. And that is a breach of the liberties of the Roman people. And it is, of course, the tribune's job particularly to protect the liberties of the Roman people. And clearly there are plenty of people criticizing Cicero at the time.

And in subsequent years, Cicero spends an inordinate amount of time defending what he did in 63. So boasting about how he saved the state, but in such a way that makes it clear, he is constantly under criticism. He has to defend himself. He has to defend himself. And, you know, later commentators say things like, well, you know, Cicero praised his consulship, not wrongly but too much kind of thing. that, you know, he just went on and on about it, and that made him a bit of a figure of fun in some ways. But he was absolutely right to be anxious about his reputation

because a few years later, in 58 BCE, the Tribune Publius Clodius, whom Cicero had been in odds with for a variety of reasons. But Claudius engineered, he really sort of made the most of all these criticisms of Cicero kind of going against Roman citizen rights and enacted a piece of legislation, obliging Cicero to go into exile. And Cicero was furious, also absolutely devastated.

He was in exile for 16 months, absolutely horrifying experience for him because he had no idea if he would ever get back to Rome. He had no idea what would happen next. It was terrible for his family, you know, it was an absolute disaster. And that was, you know, in a sense, the cause for that, if you like, or at least the excuse for that that Clodias used was the execution of the Catalinarian conspirators.

Right. So that's the reason that gives the motivation for Cicero's exile. Catherine, this has been a fascinating insight into the Castanarian conspiracy. And how complex it is, especially when you explore the character of Castellan, and how involved how much she actually wanted an interaction, how much of this is Cicero kind of just being convinced in Catalan's involvement from the beginning, when Catalan really gets involved in it.

My last question is from Cicero's own viewpoint. Do you think at the end of his life, would he have viewed his defeating the Catalanian conspiracy in his eyes? Do you think he would have viewed it as his finest hour, his greatest achievement? Well, we can say for sure that he viewed it as his finest. He did. He definitely viewed it as his finest achievement.

We can see that from the speeches that he makes in the last year of his life, where he's attacking Mark Anthony. And he presents himself as entitled to attack Mark Anthony, whom he accuses of having, you know, ambitions to take over Caesar's position. because this was after the assassination of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony was Caesar's deputy. And Cicero comes up with a series of blistering speeches against Mark Anthony, known as the Philippics. And in those he is really almost repriezing his role in attacking Catalan. And he presents Mark Anthony as, you know, here is a new Catline. And no worse Catalan.

Exactly. He was posing a very similar devastating threat to the Roman state. And in fact, he attacked Claudius in similar terms as well. well. So he kept sort of, you know, in aligning all his personal enemies with attacks on the Roman state, you know, he was kind of constantly reinforcing this idea of himself as the savior of Rome in 63, whether other people were quite so convinced, who can say, you know, that he was, he never returned to the position that he'd had as consul. Yes, people wanted to get him on their side to have his powerful oratory back them up. But, you know, if, you know,

If he got on the wrong side of Caesar in the mid-50s, that was not going to go well. Well, that's another story entirely. I mean, Catherine, this has been absolutely brilliant. What a story. And it features in your new book all about The Life of Cicero, it is called. Indeed, it is, orator, the life of Cicero and the end of the Roman Republic. And that is out soon. That is out in July.

Out on the 23rd of July. Brilliant. Catherine, it just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. It's a