In 65 he again braved Senatorial disapproval when he agreed to defend a former Tribune, Caius Cornelius, on a charge of treason—no doubt largely because he was a supporter of Pompey, whom Cicero wished to please. The trial was a cause célèbre and attracted much attention. Cicero’s speech on Cornelius’s behalf was a success and he was acquitted by a decisive majority. With great skill Cicero managed to ensure, as he told Atticus, “both that he did not assault the standing of his distinguished opponents and that he did not let the defendant be undermined by their influence.”
The Senate was not greatly perturbed. Cornelius was essentially a moderate and Cicero had few serious worries about helping him. However, he was openly suspicious of extremists and he took care to make this clear. Pompey and his supporters were one thing, the unscrupulous circle of radical politicians that had gathered around the multimillionaire Crassus was quite another. Cicero sided firmly with the optimates when Crassus proposed the annexation of Egypt, which had been left to Rome by the will of its last king. The richest man in Rome was also the greediest and had his eye on the fabulous riches of the Pharaohs. Cicero agreed with his fellow Senators that Crassus had to be stopped and spoke out vigorously against his insatiable pursuit of wealth. No action was taken to claim a bequest the Egyptians were certain to resist.
Cicero distrusted and disliked Crassus and his criticism of him was sincere; but it also conveniently enabled him to demonstrate that there was a point beyond which he would not go in his flirtation with popularis sentiment. He wanted the Senate to know that he could be trusted and that he was a conservative at heart.
5
AGAINST CATILINA
Campaign and Conspiracy: 63 BC
Cicero aimed to scale the summit of Roman political life at the first possible opportunity or, as the phrase went, “in his year.” A two-year interval was required by law between a Praetorship and a Consulship and when he left office as Praetor in December 66, Cicero laid down his powers completely, forgoing the customary provincial governorship, and at once began planning his campaign for the Consulship in 63. The election would be held in the summer of the preceding year.
Quintus wrote a “Short Guide to Electioneering” (Commentariolum petitionis) for his brother, in which he set out a comprehensive campaign strategy. (Some scholars regard the document as a rhetorical exercise of the imperial age, but, with its good sense and knowledge of the period, it is to all appearances authentic.) There is a good deal in it which today’s politicians would find instructive, as when Quintus observed that candidates should not hesitate to be generous with pledges and assurances. “People naturally prefer you to lie to them rather than refuse them your help,” he writes. There is advice about the specific obstacles Cicero was facing, chief of which was his status as a New Man. “You must cultivate [the aristocrats] diligently. You must call upon them, persuade them that politically we have always been in sympathy with the optimates and have never in the least been supporters of the populares.”
Of Cicero’s six rivals, four were hopeless electoral prospects, respectable but dull—and in one case probably dull-witted. The other two raised very different considerations. Caius Antonius was the son of the great orator, Marcus Antonius; he was corrupt, often insolvent and with little native ability or pluck. He had been disgraced in 70 and expelled from the Senate but managed all the same to be reelected to the Praetorship. Although unimpressive, he was acceptable to the political establishment and for that reason had to be taken seriously.
Lucius Sergius Catilina was an altogether more formidable opponent. He was one of a line of able and rebellious young aristocrats during the declining years of the Roman Republic who refused to settle down after early indiscretions and enter respectable politics as defenders of the status quo. They usually joined the populares. Sometimes they did so out of youthful idealism and intellectual conviction, but others were simply rebelling against family discipline. They often badly needed money.
In recent years the failure of agriculture and the sudden block in trade with, and tax revenues from, the eastern provinces following the resurgence of Mithridates had created a cash-flow crisis for the state of Rome and for many citizens. So far as we can make it out, the main plank of Catilina’s political program was a general cancellation of debts. This thoroughly frightened the propertied classes. How much popular support the policy attracted is harder to say. In the absence of a proper banking system, the web of credit spread through every level of society. While debt cancellation would to some extent benefit the poor more than the rich, in many respects it would simply shift the problem of financial liquidity around the system rather than get rid of it, replacing one set of bankrupts with another.
Whatever Catilina’s precise policies, he stood for, or was part of, the wider popularis movement, which step by step was dismantling Sulla’s reforms and was set on weakening the Senate’s hold on the levers of government. The radicals seem not to have had a clear set of proposals and seized opportunities as they came along.
The Senate had no answer to Rome’s problems and indeed sought none. Its aim was simply to maintain the constitution and resist the continual attacks on its authority. Above all, it needed to conserve its forces for the day of Pompey’s return. On the likely assumption that he would defeat Mithridates and bring Asia Minor back under Roman control, he would acquire immense prestige and would overshadow all his peers. Not only that, he would come back to Italy at the head of a victorious army and would be in a position to control, or even take over, the government.
Born into an old but impoverished family, Catilina was about the same age as Cicero. Their paths had first crossed during the War of the Allies, when they both served as very young men on Cnaeus Pompeius Strabo’s military staff. Later, during the civil war between Sulla and Marius, Catilina had taken part in the horrifying murder of Cicero’s cousin and Marius’s nephew, the Praetor Marcus Marius Gratidianus. He had been accused, with what truth we do not know, of having had sex with a Vestal Virgin, Fabia, the half-sister of Cicero’s wife, Terentia. He was also believed to have killed his own son because he was in love with a certain Aurelia Orestilla, who would not agree to marry a man with a child. Despite a pervading smell of scandal, he rose steadily up the political ladder and was Praetor in 68. He then spent a year as governor of the province of Africa and was back in Rome in mid-66.
It was at this point that he began to flirt with revolutionary illegality. Like other reformers before him, Catilina found it advisable to surround himself with bodyguards. Hostile contemporaries put a sexual gloss on this. “No one has ever had such a talent for seducing young men,” Cicero remarked. Sallust claimed that Catilina recruited “debauchees, adulterers and gamblers, who have squandered their inheritances in gaming dens, pot houses and brothels.”
Like every Roman politician Catilina needed to create a coterie of supporters on the basis of favors provided. What was unusual about him was his focus on the young; this may reflect his social and personal tastes or, alternatively, hostility in respectable circles, where alarmist stories deterred mature and experienced citizens from joining his cause. His following was said to include criminals and informers alongside members of his own class. He was reported to reward his youthful supporters handsomely for their loyalty, procuring mistresses for some and dogs and horses for others. Cicero gave an account of a party attended by a certain Quintus Gallius, a friend of Catilina, which evokes the raffish atmosphere of his circle.