Pardon my obscurity there. Cicero is alluding to that murder trial, and the Suetonius citation also refers to that trial, but only the third citation I listed, from Dio, actually mentions that Catiline was one of the defendants in that trial. I should have scrapped the first two citations. I had the intention of clarifying those citations, but I ran out of time last night and forgot about it.socratidion dixit:
Catiline was innocent
- Thread starter C Crastinus
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We're all in agreement here. Cicero wouldn't have lied about something that would have been common knowledge to his contemporaries, since that would have only made him look like a fool. When he was attacking someone's character, however, he could exaggerate quite a bit. In his fifth Phillipic, he had nothing but the highest praise for Lepidus, and even got the Senate to erect an equestrian statue in his honor, but in a private letter to Brutus he wrote that Lepidus was lacking in principle and consistency and that he was semper inimicum rei publicae and instrumentum regni, which shows that he was not always sincere in his speeches.Cinefactus dixit:I agree. Obviously he exaggerates in his speeches for rhetorical effect, but I doubt that he would tell an outright lie.socratidion dixit:Though Cicero is hostile, I'm inclined to trust him if he says that a prosecution actually happened. Well, 99 percent, anyway.
I'm looking only at the Cicero references now...C Crastinus dixit:He was charged with:
incestum with the Vestal Fabia in 73 BC. Plut. Cato 19.3; Asconius; Orosius 6.3.1; Sallust Cat. 15.1, 35.1;
Cicero Cat. 3.9
Again, I don't see anything conclusive in this one:
Eundemque (sc. Lentulum) dixisse fatalem hunc annum esse ad interitum huius urbis atque imperii, qui esset annus decimus post virginum absolutionem, post Capitoli autem incensionem vice simus.
So some virgins -- I'll grant you Vestal virgins -- were acquitted. But from what charge, and in connection with whom, not a word. Unlike Cicero to let a chance pass to slander Catiline, especially when the pickings were, in reality, so thin. But quite characteristic of later authors to take make something out of a loose end.
OK, I think Catiline was charged with extortion. From the Har. Resp. I see that Clodius, his prosecutor, is supposed to have been bribed by him to throw the case, mud easy to sling, and one in a list of a number of other appalling slanders against Clodius. (But the Atticus letter probably confirms it). Anyway, it's about as clear as anything can be that Catiline underwent prosecution. And must have been acquitted. It is also alluded to in Cat. 1.18 (just after the bit I quote below)C Crastinus dixit:de repetundis (extortion) in 65 BC. Cicero considered defending him. Cicero Ad Att. 1.2.1: hoc tempore Catilinam, competitorum nostrum, defendere cogitamus...spero, si absolutus erit, coniunctiorem illum nobis fore in ratione petitionis.; Cic. De Har. Resp. 42; Q. Cic. Comm. Petit. 10; Asconius
The murder prosecution is questionable, if I take the hard line that only the events explicitly mentioned by Cicero himself, and verifiable by the living memory of his contemporaries, are reliable.
Do we have any data on the proportion of provincial governors who were prosecuted 'de repetundis' on their return?
Do you really not mind that Cicero considered colluding with him? Didn't mind that it was a stitch-up? If, after all, he was a well-known murderer and defiler of vestals?
In Cat. 1, Cicero mentions only one actual crime: the murder of his wife -- asserted in a list of the usual slander about sexual deviation, and certainly not anything we believe he was prosecuted or convicted for. The rest is passed over in silence, the horrifying hugeness of it too vast or too shocking to be spoken out loud. Somehow by the end of the speech it becomes "No crime for some years now has come into existence except through you, no outrage without you; you alone have killed many citizens..."(1.18). This is not just exaggeration, it's bare-faced lying. Citizens? Name one! (Or are we going to rake up Sullan crimes, as per Dio 37.10? Don't talk too loud: Pompey might hear you...).
Apologies for the slightly flippant tone. The first Catilinarian always riles me, so much puff, so little substance. Apologies too for taking the obvious tack of doubting the evidence -- but what else was I going to do?