To form out of such elements a conspiracy for the overthrow of the existing order of things could not be difficult to men who possessed money and political influence.  Catilina, Piso, and their fellows entered readily into any plan which gave the prospect of proscriptions and cancelling of debtor-books; the former had moreover special hostility to the aristocracy, because it had opposed the candidature of that infamous and dangerous man for the consulship.  As he had formerly in the character of an executioner of Sulla hunted the proscribed at the head of a band of Celts and had killed among others his own aged father-in-law with his own hand, he now readily consented to promise similar services to the opposite party.  A secret league was formed.  The number of individuals received into it is said to have exceeded 400; it included associates in all the districts and urban communities of Italy; besides which, as a matter of course, numerous recruits would flock unbidden from the ranks of the dissolute youth to an insurrection, which inscribed on its banner the seasonable programme of wiping out debts.

Failure of the First Plans of Conspiracy

In December 688—­so we are told—­the leaders of the league thought that they had found the fitting occasion for striking a blow.  The two consuls chosen for 689, Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius Autronius Paetus, had recently been judicially convicted of electoral bribery, and therefore had according to legal rule forfeited their expectancy of the highest office.  Both thereupon joined the league.  The conspirators resolved to procure the consulship for them by force, and thereby to put themselves in possession of the supreme power in the state.  On the day when the new consuls should enter on their office—­the 1st Jan. 689—­ the senate-house was to be assailed by armed men, the new consuls and the victims otherwise designated were to be put to death, and Sulla and Paetus were to be proclaimed as consuls after the cancelling of the judicial sentence which excluded them.  Crassus was then to be invested with the dictatorship and Caesar with the mastership of the horse, doubtless with a view to raise an imposing military force, while Pompeius was employed afar off at the Caucasus.  Captains and common soldiers were hired and instructed; Catilina waited on the appointed day in the neighbourhood of the senate-house for the concerted signal, which was to be given him by Caesar on a hint from Crassus.  But he waited in vain; Crassus was absent from the decisive sitting of the senate, and for this time the projected insurrection failed.  A similar still more comprehensive plan of murder was then concerted for the 5th Feb.; but this too was frustrated, because Catilina gave the signal too early, before the bandits who were bespoken had all arrived.  Thereupon the secret was divulged.  The government did not venture openly to proceed against the conspiracy, but it assigned a guard to the consuls who were primarily threatened, and it opposed to the band of the conspirators a band paid by the government.  To remove Piso, the proposal was made that he should be sent as quaestor with praetorian powers to Hither Spain; to which Crassus consented, in the hope of securing through him the resources of that important province for the insurrection.  Proposals going farther were prevented by the tribunes.