person
Lucius Sergius Catilina
Catiline
also: L. Catilina, Sergius
The patrician conspirator (c. 108–62 BC) whose plot against the consular government in 63 BC Cicero exposed and crushed; killed at the battle of Pistoria in January 62 BC.
Reading notes
- Ad Atticum 1.2 §1 defending Catiline, our competitor
Catiline, a rival for the consulship of 63, was on trial for extortion (repetundae) over his governorship of Africa. Cicero weighed defending him to win his goodwill in the canvass; in the event he did not, and Catiline was acquitted by other means.
- Ad Atticum 4.3 §2 has since made all the Catilinas into Acidini
A proverbial hyperbole: Clodius's violence has been so extreme that even the arch-conspirator Catiline now looks, by comparison, as upright as a Manlius Acidinus, a family byword for old-fashioned respectability.
- Against Catiline, First Speech §1 How long, Catiline
Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? --- among the most-quoted opening lines in Latin oratory.
- Stoic Paradoxes §27 the madness of Catiline
The Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC, suppressed during Cicero's consulship; here he charges that its remnants passed to Clodius, whose armed bands made Rome no true city during Cicero's exile.
- Philippica XIV §14 who crushed, overthrew, and laid low Catiline
Cicero recalls his suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy in 63 BC as proof that he, of all men, would never seek tyranny. The rumour of the fasces would have made him the very Catiline he had destroyed.
- Second Philippic §118 I despised the swords of Catiline
Cicero ends by likening his stand against Antony to his consular suppression of Catiline's conspiracy in 63 BC; "nearly twenty years" refers back to that year.
- On His Return: To the Senate §10 Catiline
Cicero brands the consuls of 58 (Gabinius and Piso) as worse than the Catilinarians by having one demand back ``Catiline his lover'' and the other ``Cethegus his cousin'' --- the leaders of the conspiracy Cicero had crushed as consul in 63 BC.
- For Publius Sulla §16 Catiline
L. Sergius Catilina, the bankrupt nobleman whose plot to seize power by armed insurrection Cicero exposed and suppressed as consul in 63 BC. He died in battle at Pistoria early in 62.