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martino

The Catiline Conspiracy

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How could they have produced "deafening" music without an electric amplifier?

 

Yeah I know. Ive wondered this too but apparently this was a direct quote from old Marcus Tullius Cicero himself.

 

Maybe it was in a small space or maybe their eardrums werent as decibel blasted as ours are :D

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How could they have produced "deafening" music without an electric amplifier?

 

Yeah I know. Ive wondered this too but apparently this was a direct quote from old Marcus Tullius Cicero himself.

 

Source?

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Anthony Everitt's CICERO (Yes the book that inspired my name) paints Catalina as being really really popular with the young and uninhibited. He apparently also threw the wildest parties that included "deafening" music, booze and sex. This is probably the best tool for the First Triumvirate. He was popular in a way that Caesar and Crassus could never be. It also sounds like such parties would need funding (thus Crassus could control him). Its funny to think of sex drugs and rock n' roll in the Roman Republic :D

Caesar could aquire that sort of popularity if from a slightly differant class. when you say 'of sex drugs and rock n' roll in the Roman Republic' i imediatly think of Clodius :) . i wonder why...

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I suppose, when probably the loudest sound anyone heard (the eruption of Vesuvius apart) was probably a blacksmith's hammer - the standard of what comprised "deafening" differed from our own.

 

Don't I recall a letter of Seneca's where he talks about the noises wafting from a bathhouse, which gives some idea of what Romans regarded as a nuisance?

 

Phil

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Just to provoke some more debate on this issue......

 

I have just read Sallust. I have been surprised at the way in which he villifies Catiline's supporters. At one point ( para 23 - page 191 if using the old black penguin ) Sallust refuses to speculate after he has already conveyed to the reader the possibility of Catiline swearing an oath sealed with blood and wine. This is what I would expect of an historian relaying the facts peppered with rumour and stating his own interpretation of the facts.

What I find difficult is that on the one hand we have been given this image of Catiline supporters being held together because of the oppressive debt ( Sallust talks about the loss of diginity of not being able to support their family as being perceived to be worst that death or exile ). While we are told of the Senate granting rewards of two hundred thousand sesterces plus a pardon for information about the plot. It would appear that few if any put themselves forward for these rewards. In a time of such massive debt what would two hundred thousand sesterces have been worth? What would have prevented Catiline supporters changing side? Who the client system have represented such a hold over them?

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I should have listed my source (Thank you M. Portius Cato)

 

I found the quote on pg. 89 of Anthony Everritt's Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician. 2001 by Random House: New York

 

Everrit lists his source as Cicero's De Oficiis

 

Everritt states "Cicero gave an account of a party attended by a certain Quintus Gallius, a friend of Catilina, which evokes the raffish atmosphere of his (I assume Catilina's) circle."

 

Ok this is the quote by Cicero

 

"There are shouts and screams, screeching females, there is deafening music. I thought I could make out some people entering and others leaving, some of them staggering from the effects of wine, some of them still yawning from yesterday's boozing. Among them was Gallius, perfcumed and wreathed by flowers; the floor was filthy, soiled with wine and covered with withered garlands and fish bones."

 

hmm re reading this it doesnt sound like its Catalina's party. Does it?

I think even if it isn't describing one of Catalina's parties Its describing his crowd.

So what do you all think?

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This is odd. I find the relevant passage in Everitt, but not in de Officiis (the source Everitt lists). I wonder where Everitt really found this passage if it's not in de Officiis.

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So are Cataline and Catiline interchangeable? I've generally only seen Catiline.

 

Some interesting tidbits:

 

In Fuller, some years after his death Cicero refers to Catiline as a great man or words to that effect.

 

Lucius Sergius Catiline - Since the republic was founded Sergius gens served 12 consulships (or thereabouts) but none after 300 BC (don't have the date of the last consulship). That seems a bit odd that there would be such a drop off. Is it possible that the last original Sergius died (didn't something like this happen with the Fabius gens) and that this was a new Sergius? Just wondering aloud...

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So are Cataline and Catiline interchangeable? I've generally only seen Catiline.

 

Some interesting tidbits:

 

In Fuller, some years after his death Cicero refers to Catiline as a great man or words to that effect.

 

Lucius Sergius Catiline - Since the republic was founded Sergius gens served 12 consulships (or thereabouts) but none after 300 BC (don't have the date of the last consulship). That seems a bit odd that there would be such a drop off. Is it possible that the last original Sergius died (didn't something like this happen with the Fabius gens) and that this was a new Sergius? Just wondering aloud...

 

There are records of Sergii around after 300 BC (just not as Consuls). There were 7-8 branches of the gens Sergia so there is a lot of tracking to do to be specific (best way to track is by their cognomen). It could very well be that like many patrician families they fell out of the limelight for financial or other reasons until Cataline started his funny business.

Edited by Publius Nonius Severus

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In Fuller, some years after his death Cicero refers to Catiline as a great man or words to that effect.

 

I don't see this in Fuller, and I've not seen anywhere that Cicero had a change of heart about Catiline. Are you sure you've got this reference correct?

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In Fuller, some years after his death Cicero refers to Catiline as a great man or words to that effect.

 

I don't see this in Fuller, and I've not seen anywhere that Cicero had a change of heart about Catiline. Are you sure you've got this reference correct?

 

The only place I saw about Cicero having a good word for Catiline is in Pro Caelio, in which he says:

 

Caelius espoused the cause of Catiline, when he had been for several years mixing in the forum; and many of every rank and of every age did the very same thing. For that man, as I should think many of you must remember, had very many marks

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In Fuller, some years after his death Cicero refers to Catiline as a great man or words to that effect.

 

I don't see this in Fuller, and I've not seen anywhere that Cicero had a change of heart about Catiline. Are you sure you've got this reference correct?

 

looking...

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In Fuller, some years after his death Cicero refers to Catiline as a great man or words to that effect.

 

I don't see this in Fuller, and I've not seen anywhere that Cicero had a change of heart about Catiline. Are you sure you've got this reference correct?

 

looking...

 

Bah, not Fuller. When I finished the Catiline section in Fuller I looked around for some sources on the net for more info on Catiline. I believe my comment came about from this wikipedia entry:

 

"Well after Catiline's death and the end of the threat of the conspiracy, even Cicero reluctantly admitted that Catiline was an enigmatic man that possessed both the greatest of virtues and the most terrible of vices."

 

It struck me since I'd never read anything positive about Catiline before.

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