The leaders of the movement again kept in the background.  On this occasion they had set up as candidates for the consulship Catilina himself and Gaius Antonius, the younger son of the orator and a brother of the general who had an ill repute from Crete.  They were sure of Catilina; Antonius, originally a Sullan like Catilina and like the latter brought to trial on that account some years before by the democratic party and ejected from the senate(12)—­otherwise an indolent, insignificant man, in no respect called to be a leader, and utterly bankrupt—­ willingly lent himself as a tool to the democrats for the prize of the consulship and the advantages attached to it.  Through these consuls the heads of the conspiracy intended to seize the government, to arrest the children of Pompeius, who remained behind in the capital, as hostages, and to take up arms in Italy and the provinces against Pompeius.  On the first news of the blow struck in the capital, the governor Gnaeus Piso was to raise the banner of insurrection in Hither Spain.  Communication could not be held with him by way of the sea, since Pompeius commanded the seas.  For this purpose they reckoned on the Transpadanes the old clients of the democracy—­ among whom there was great agitation, and who would of course have at once received the franchise—­and, further, on different Celtic tribes.(13) The threads of this combination reached as far as Mauretania.  One of the conspirators, the Roman speculator Publius Sittius from Nuceria, compelled by financial embarrassments to keep aloof from Italy, had armed a troop of desperadoes there and in Spain, and with these wandered about as a leader of free-lances in western Africa, where he had old commercial connections.

Consular Elections
Cicero Elected instead of Catalina

The party put forth all its energies for the struggle of the election.  Crassus and Caesar staked their money—­whether their own or borrowed—­and their connections to procure the consulship for Catilina and Antonius; the comrades of Catilina strained every nerve to bring to the helm the man who promised them the magistracies and priesthoods, the palaces and country-estates of their opponents, and above all deliverance from their debts, and who, they knew, would keep his word.  The aristocracy was in great perplexity, chiefly because it was not able even to start counter-candidates.  That such a candidate risked his head, was obvious; and the times were past when the post of danger allured the burgess—­now even ambition was hushed in presence of fear.  Accordingly the nobility contented themselves with making a feeble attempt to check electioneering intrigues by issuing a new law respecting the purchase of votes—­which, however, was thwarted by the veto of a tribune of the people—­and with turning over their votes to a candidate who, although not acceptable to them, was at least inoffensive.  This was Marcus Cicero, notoriously a political trimmer,(14) accustomed to