Catilina stayed elsewhere and on the night of November 6 attended an important planning meeting. Evidently morale was low, and he did his best to raise everyone’s spirits. He announced necessary administrative arrangements, but the indispensable Fulvia, briefed by her lover, was on hand to tell Cicero later in the evening what had been discussed.
Cicero’s growing confidence is illustrated by the fact that he waited until November 8, two days later, before summoning the Senate to meet at the temple of Jupiter the Stayer near the Palatine Hill, which was easier to guard than the Senate House. He had extraordinary news to impart and the occasion was all the more dramatic in that Catilina, although he must have known or guessed that his cover was blown, put in an appearance. The Senate’s mood had hardened and few members spoke to him or sat beside him. At the meeting, the Consul addressed Catilina directly:
I am able to report how [on November 6] you came into Scythemakers’ Street (I will be perfectly specific) and entered the house of Marcus Laeca: and many of your accomplices in this lunatic, criminal enterprise joined you there. Do you dare to deny it?… You parceled out the regions of Italy. You decided where you wanted each of your agents to go. You assigned parts of the city to be burned. You confirmed that you yourself would be leaving and added that the only thing that held you back for a little was the fact that I was still alive.
Cicero reported that two of those at the meeting had agreed to go to his house in the early hours, somehow gain entry and murder him in his bed. Forewarned, he had increased his guard and arranged that the men, ostensibly presenting themselves to convey “the morning’s greetings,” were refused admission.
A heated exchange between the two protagonists in the drama followed. According to Sallust, Catilina reacted fiercely to the speech, calling Cicero an “immigrant” and refusing to go into voluntary exile without a trial. Cicero asked the Senators if they wished to banish Catilina. This was an ill-judged intervention. Embarrassed by Catilina’s presence, the majority said nothing. Cleverly retrieving the situation, Cicero then asked if they would order him to banish Quintus Lutatius Catulus, one of the House’s most respected members. They roared back, “No.” This allowed the Consul to claim that, by its silence, the Senate had in fact consigned the revolutionary to exile.
Catilina said he would think over what he had heard and left the meeting freely. He understood that all was up for him in Rome: only the military option remained. He slipped out of the city that night, accompanied by 300 armed men, and made his way north to Manlius’s troops. Before he left he wrote an explanatory letter to the elder statesman Catulus. If it is genuine, and it reads so, it almost touchingly reveals a man, self-centered yet sincere, who had nothing left to hope for.
I do not intend … to make any formal defense of my new policy. I will however explain my point of view; what I am going to say implies no consciousness of guilt, and on my word of honor you can accept it as the truth. I was provoked by wrongs and insults and robbed of the fruits of my painstaking industry, and I found myself unable to maintain a position of dignity. So I openly undertook the championship of the oppressed, as I had often done before.… I saw unworthy men promoted to honorable positions [and] felt myself treated as an outcast on account of unjust suspicions. That is why I have adopted a course of action, amply justified in my present circumstances, which offers a hope of saving what is left of my honor. I intended to write at greater length, but news has come that they are preparing to use force against me. So for the present I commend Orestilla [his wife] to you and entrust her to your protection. Shield her from wrong, I beg in the name of your own children. Farewell.
Claiming the office of which he believed he had been robbed, Catilina assumed a Consul’s rods and axes. He also took with him a silver eagle, a military standard that had belonged to Marius and which he kept in a shrine at his house. He took his time to reach Faesulae, arriving in mid-November. AS soon as the Senate heard the news of his departure/defection, he and Manlius were declared public enemies.
In Rome the management of the conspiracy devolved to the middle-aged Lentulus. It is strange that he and his colleagues did not abandon their plans. Perhaps they were still under the influence of Catilina’s outsize personality. Perhaps they feared to break their oaths. Perhaps they felt they were on a vehicle careering out of control and that it was marginally safer to stay on board than jump off. Whatever their reasons, they held to their course.
Although Lentulus had a contemptuous attitude toward the proprieties of public life, he was a superstitious man and was apparently encouraged by some forged prophecies predicting that he would achieve absolute power (from which it may be inferred that he was not averse to supplanting Catilina). He decided on a wholesale massacre of the Senate and timed it for one of the nights of the Saturnalia in mid-December. This festival of misrule (a distant original of Christmas) would provide cover for the preparations. It was the custom for clients to bring their patrons presents, and houses were kept open all night for the purpose. About 400 men, carrying concealed swords, were detailed to kill Senators individually in their homes. Lentulus devised a solution to the problem of the returning Pompey; his children would be taken as hostages against his good behavior. The plan had a frivolous kind of ingenuity, but, as ever, Fulvia was able to pass on the details to Cicero.
The Consul was now interrupted by a legal matter. AS he had promised he would, Sulpicius prosecuted Murena for handing out bribes during his election campaign. Cicero defended him and, although exhausted, produced one of his most entertaining speeches. He poked fun at nit-picking lawyers and scoffed at Marcus Porcius Cato, a leading conservative who was a member of the prosecution team, for his extravagant commitment to the doctrines of Stoicism. “But I must change my tone,” he said coyly,
for Cato argues with me on rigid and Stoical principles. He says that it is not right for goodwill to be enticed by food. He says that men’s judgments, in the important business of electing men to office, ought not to be corrupted by pleasures. So, if a candidate invites a man to supper, he commits an offense. “Do you,” he asks, “seek to obtain supreme power, supreme authority, and the helm of the Republic, by encouraging men’s sensual appetites, by soothing their minds, by offering them luxuries? Are you seeking employment as a pimp from a band of lecherous young men, or the sovereignty of the world from the Roman people?” What an extraordinary thing to say! For our customs, our way of living, our manners, and the constitution itself reject it. Consider the Spartans, the inventors of that lifestyle and of that sort of language, men who lie down at mealtime on hard oak benches, and the Cretans, none of whom ever lies down at all to eat. Neither of them has preserved their political constitutions or their power better than the Romans, who set aside times for pleasure as well as times for work. One of those nations was destroyed by a single invasion of our army, the other only maintains its discipline and its laws thanks to our imperial protection.
Cato sourly observed: “What a comical Consul we’ve got!” Murena was acquitted.
It was time to deal with Lentulus. With almost incredible stupidity, the conspirators played into Cicero’s hands. It so happened that a delegation from the Allobroges, a Gallic tribe with a grievance, was in Rome. Lentulus thought it would be a good idea to let them into the conspiracy and encourage them to stir up a revolt in Gaul. The Allobroges were uncertain how to react and consulted their patron in Rome, one Fabius Sanga (a forebear of whom had conquered the Allobroges in 121 BC). He brought them at once to Cicero, who instructed them to negotiate with the conspirators.