In Catilinam Epilogue

What happened next?

Catiline denied everything to the senate. To appease his accusers, however, he offered to go under house arrest (even at Cicero's home), claiming he was being forced into exile without a trial. Later, after calling for uprisings throughout the city, he escaped in the night with 300 men, travelling to Etruria. Upon learning this, the Senate declared him a public enemy.

Multiple Choice

Cicero says to Catiline that, "Patēre tua cōnsilia." What would have been Catiline's response?

• Habeo multa consilia

• Habeo nulla consilia

• Sunt consilia aliorum

• Sunt consilia Ciceronis

Multiple Choice

Quinque coniurationes comprehensi sunt.

• five conspirators were arrested

• five consuls are selected

• five conspiracies were discovered

• five understood the conspiracy

Julius Caesar, a friend of Catiline, opposed Cicero's suggestion for immediate execution without a trial. Caesar suggested the conspirators should be imprisoned until a trial could be held. Since there were no Roman prisons, fines, exile, or death were the usual punishments. Caesar declared that while he was not sympathetic to the conspirators, the Senate must not act in haste.

Multiple Choice

Caesar would have said...

• iudicium tenendum est

• viri expellendi sunt

• Cicero interficiendus est

• hi viri honorandi sunt

The Senate agreed with Cicero, however. Although a trial was customary and dictated by law, Cicero used his emergency powers as consul to forgo a trial. Each of the five men was
taken to the Tullianum, an ancient
building in the Forum that had once
served as a well-house. They were
forced into a small, dingy and smelly
room where they were strangled
with a noose by an executioner.

Multiple Choice

The Tullianum is also known as the... (use derivatives if you don't remember)

• carcer

• cancer

• corpus

• crepitum

Vixere!

Speaking to the crowd outside, Cicero, now being hailed as pater patriae meaning “father of the fatherland,” exclaimed Vixere! or “They have lived!” The praise was, however, short-lived. Many people began to question his blatant use of executive powers, a decision that clearly violated a person's right to a fair trial.

Fill in the Blanks

Cicero uses an alternate form of the verb to pronounce that "they have lived." Instead of vixere, the usual form would be...

All of Catiline's plans had failed. He and his army tried to escape across the Apennine Mountains but were intercepted. Of his supposed 20,000 troops, three-fourths had deserted him. He was defeated and killed. The plot came to an end.

​Alcide Segoni's Discovery of the Body of Catiline (1871).

Multiple Select

Catilina...

• superatus est

• mortuus est

• superavit

• mori

The tribune Clodius (a follower of Caesar’s), proposed a law stating that anyone who killed a Roman citizen without trial would be stripped of their citizenship and forced into exile. The law passed. Cicero was forbidden to live within 500 miles of Italy, and all his property was confiscated. After roughly a year and a half of exile, the political conditions changed, his property was restored to him, and he was allowed to return to Rome, which he did to great popular approval, claiming that the Republic was restored with him. This was also treated by many as an absurd exaggeration.

Multiple Choice

Cicero...

• interfectus est

• in carcerem iit

• expulsus est

• factus est dictator

Although he had success as a consul, a writer and poet, Cicero always believed his fight against Catiline was his greatest achievement. He was still referring to it years later when he gave a similar speech about Marc Antony. Marc Antony, however, was much more powerful than Catiline, and had Cicero proscribed.

Multiple Choice

Proscription was...

• being condemned to death

• being arrested and imprisoned

• being exiled

• being shunned by society

Modern theories

Modern views on the conspiracy vary. Uncovering the truth of the conspiracy is difficult; it is well accepted that the ancient sources were heavily biased against Catiline and demonised him in the aftermath of his defeat. The extent of the exaggeration is unclear and still debated; most classicists agree that the conspiracy occurred – rather than being a manipulative invention of Cicero's – but concede that its actual threat to the republic was exaggerated for Cicero's benefit and to heighten later dramatic narratives.