Cicero and Catiline

This paper is more historical than literary, but you are encouraged to engage with the primary texts from which we derive most of our historical knowledge about the crisis year 63 BC, the year of Cicero's consulship and of Catiline's conspiracy. Much of our information comes from Cicero himself (especially the speeches set: In Catilinam I-IV and Pro Sulla), and from the colourful but hostile monograph by Sallust (the Bellum Catilinae, also prescribed): you are encouraged to interrogate these sources and test how far we can trust the reconstructions of the events which have become canonical. Was Cicero really an ‘optimus consul’? Was Catiline the fiend he was later painted? What were the real political issues of the year, and how far back did the roots of discontent and revolution go? Like ‘Tacitus’, this paper is a good introduction to many of the topics which you will meet in Ancient History in Greats (Final Examination in Literae Humaniores).