Catiline

Cicero's suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy during his consulship in 63 B.C.

In addition to the Catilinarian conspiracy thwarted by Cicero, the assassination of Julius Caesar, the machinations of the first and second triumvirates to control and ultimately undermine the republic, and a long list of emperors who died in office but not in their beds, there is the simple fact that even in the golden age of the republic Roman politics was a game played largely by a small number of senatorial families.

Avelina Carrera de la Red's "La rebelion de Martin Cortes segun Juan Suarez de Peralta (Mexico, 1589), una 'catilinaria' al estilo criollo" identifies the points of contact between the insurrection of the Spanish nobility in sixteenth-century Mexico and the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC.

Pagan focuses on the narratives surrounding five conspiracies that will be familiar to all but the most casual students of Roman history: the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BCE, as narrated by Sallust; the Bacchanalian affair of 186 BCE, as narrated by Livy; the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 CE, as narrated by Tacitus; the assassination of Caligula in 41 CE, as narrated by Josephus; and the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, as narrated by Appian.

Caesar, who had defended Catiline's confederates in the Senate, was oratorically worsted by both Cicero and Cato; suspicions of his involvement in the Catilinarian conspiracy tainted him in the eyes of many.