An incident occurred while Cato was speaking which caused much amusement at his expense. A letter was brought in for Caesar, and Cato immediately accused him of being in touch with the conspirators. He challenged him to read the note out loud. Caesar simply passed it across: it was a love letter from Servilia, Caesar’s mistress at the time and Cato’s half-sister. Cato threw it back angrily with the words: “Take it, you drunken idiot.”
According to Plutarch, the speech was the only one of Cato’s ever to be published and is a good example of his ability, when he fixed his mind on something, to see it with exceptional clarity. He was one of the first to recognize the seriousness of the threat Caesar posed to conservative interests. The Senate was impressed and shifted its ground again, endorsing Cato’s motion for the death penalty. Picking up a suggestion of Caesar’s, they also ordered the confiscation of the conspirators’ property. Caesar protested that it was unfair for the Senate to endorse the severest element in his proposal while rejecting his recommendation for mercy. Cicero acknowledged the point and remitted the confiscation.
Caesar now appears to have lost his temper. According to Suetonius, he tried to block the proceedings. A body of equites outside, serving as a defense force for the House and presumably listening through open doors, threatened to kill him unless he desisted. They unsheathed their swords and made passes at him. Some friends huddled around him and protected him with their arms and togas. The guards looked at Cicero, who shook his head. Daunted, Caesar left the meeting and did not attend the Senate for the rest of the year.
What were the legal rights and wrongs of the argument? In the absence of a complete knowledge of the Roman legal system, it is hard to be sure. The populares may have been correct to argue that the Final Act did not override citizens’ basic rights. Cicero’s insistence on consulting the Senate before deciding what to do with the prisoners suggests that he was aware of the possible validity of their view. However, it is interesting that in his intervention Caesar did not raise the question of the legality of summary executions. The facts that Lentulus and his friends had admitted their guilty intent and that weapons had been found in their possession may have been enough to place them outside the protection of the law. However, unlike Catilina, the conspirators had not yet put their armory to any use. So the issue came down to whether plotting to commit treason could be equated with the act of treason itself. Cato was in no doubt that this was so, but he was arguing in the heat of the moment. In the final analysis, he and the other Senators were behaving not as legal experts but as politicians forced to come to a quick decision in an emergency. Nobody at the time challenged their right to do so.
Leaving the Senate in session, Cicero, surrounded by leading Senators, went to collect the prisoners one by one from the Praetors’ houses. There was no announcement, but the crowds in the Forum sensed that, after the noise and drama of debate, something real and irreversible was under way. Most observers thought that at this stage the men were simply being taken to prison. Apparently no one expected that there would be immediate executions.
A frightened silence descended as the Consul brought Lentulus from the Palatine Hill and led him down the Holy Way to the far corner of the Forum, where the state prison stood. Prisoners were thrown into the dungeon, originally built as a cistern, which was entered through a hole in the roof, and usually left to starve or to await the executioners. According to Sallust, “its filthy condition, darkness and foul smell give it a loathsome and terrifying air.” Lentulus was lowered inside and strangled with a noose. The Praetors went to collect the other four prisoners and they too were led down to the dungeon and executed in turn.
For the time being few people knew what was going on. Cicero decided not to make any announcements at this stage, for he noticed groups of people standing here and there in the Forum who had played minor roles in the conspiracy. They were waiting for nightfall when they hoped to make a rescue bid. Once the executions were over, though, there was no further need for silence. The Consul walked into the Forum and shouted in a loud voice: “They have lived,” avoiding a direct and unlucky mention of death.
Night began to fall and the mood of the crowd changed. AS often happens after the relief of tension, there was an explosion of hysterical high spirits. Still accompanied by Senators, the Consul made his way home across the Forum and up the Sacred Way. He was cheered along streets brightly lit by lamps and torches in doorways and on roofs. The Senate had conferred on him the title “Father of His Country,” and when Cato repeated the compliment outside, doubtless at the top of his voice, everyone applauded. It was the proudest moment in the life of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Here he was, center stage in his chosen arena, the Forum, the hero of the hour and the first man in Rome. Nothing again in the years that lay ahead would happen quite like it.
AS for Catilina, the dreadful news from Rome soon reached his troops and they began to melt away. He was said to have recruited 20,000 soldiers, but in a little while he had only one quarter of that number. His old friend Antonius was given the task of tracking him down. On the day in early 62 when the two armies met, the reluctant general, no doubt diplomatically, pleaded gout and left the battle to his deputy. It was an easy but bloody victory. Catilina fell beside Marius’s standard—we are told, fighting hand-to-hand to the last. The encounter was probably little more than a messy one-sided skirmish. But Catilina was dead.
For all the jibes of the optimates, Cicero had averted a danger to the state. In contrast with his later reputation for vanity and indecision, he had acted with intelligence, patience and firmness. He had amply fulfilled the administrative promise of his Quaestorship in Sicily and shown that he was better able to govern than many of his peers. The conspiracy was perhaps less of a threat than Cicero claimed. Nevertheless, Catilina represented, if only in caricature, the continuing challenge from the populares and a new model of politician. His defeat was likely to have serious implications for activists like Caesar.
The outgoing Consul had reason to be proud of his stewardship of the Republic, but success had come with a cost. His efforts before he took office to be all things to all men, to please the radical as well as the conservative interest, had failed. His refusal to countenance the land-reform bill in January and his decision to execute the conspirators without trial (especially after the warning of the Rabirius affair) placed him firmly on the side of the optimates. Cicero’s cover was blown.