Lucius Catilina [commonly called Catiline] was of high birth, richly endowed both in mind and body, but of extreme depravity; with extraordinary powers of endurance, reckless, crafty, and versatile, a master in the arts of deception, at once grasping and lavish, unbridled in his passions, ready of speech, but with little true insight Of insatiable and inordinate ambitions, he was possessed, after Sulla’s supremacy, with a craving to grasp the control of the state, utterly careless of the means, so the end were attained.  Naturally headstrong, he was urged forward by his want of money, the consciousness of his crimes, and the degradation of morals in a society where luxury and greed ruled side by side.

The wildest, the most reckless, the most prodigal, the most criminal, were readily drawn into the circle of Catiline’s associates; in such a circle those who were not already utterly depraved very soon became so under the sinister and seductive influence of their leader.  This man, who in the pursuit of his own vices had done his own son to death, did not hesitate to encourage his pupils in every species of crime; and with such allies, and the aid of the disbanded Sullan soldiery swarming in Italy, he dreamed of subverting the Roman state while her armies, under Gnaeus Pompeius, were far away.

The first step was to secure his own election as consul.  One plot of his had already failed, because Catiline himself had attempted to move prematurely; but the conspirators remained scatheless.  Those who were now with Catiline included members of the oldest families and of equestrian rank.  Crassus himself was suspected of complicity, owing to his rivalry with Pompeius.  The assembled conspirators were addressed by Catiline in a speech of the most virulent character.  He urged these social outcasts to rise against a bloated plutocracy battening on the ill-gotten wealth to which his audience had just as good a title.  He promised the cancellation of all debts, the proscription of the wealthy, and the general application of the rule of “the spoils to the victors.”  He had friends at the head of the armies in Spain and Mauritania, if Gaius Antonius were the other successful candidate for the consulship, his co-operation, too, could be secured.  Such was the purport of his speech; but I do not credit the popular fiction that the conspirators were solemnly pledged in a bowl of mingled wine and blood.

Rumours of the plot, however, began to leak out through a certain Fulvia, mistress of Quintus Curio, a man who had been expelled from the senatorial body on account of his iniquities; and this probably caused many of the nobility to support, for the consulship, Cicero, whom, as a “new man,” they would otherwise have religiously opposed.  The result was that Catiline’s candidature failed, and Cicero was elected with Gaius Antonius for his colleague.