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The
Catilinarians are a set of four speeches that Cicero, while consul in 63 BC, delivered before the senate and the Roman people against the conspirator Catiline and his followers. Or are they? Cicero did not publish the speeches until three years later, and he substantially revised them before publication, rewriting some passages and adding others, all with the aim of justifying the action he had taken against the conspirators and memorializing his own role in the suppression of the conspiracy. How, then, should we interpret these speeches as literature? Can we treat them as representing what Cicero actually said? Or do we have to read them merely as political pamphlets from a later time? In this, the first book-length discussion of these famous speeches, D. H. Berry clarifies what the speeches actually are and explains how he believes we should approach them. In addition, the book contains a full and up-to-date account of the Catilinarian conspiracy and a survey of the influence that the story of Catiline has had on writers such as Sallust and Virgil, Ben Jonson and Henrik Ibsen, from antiquity to the present day.
List of contents
- Editors' Foreword
- Preface
- Figures
- Preliminary Note
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Patrician and the New Man
- Chapter 2: What are the Catilinarians?
- Chapter 3: Denouncing the Living / Dead Catiline: The First Catilinarian
- Chapter 4: Persuading the People: The Second and Third Catilinarians
- Chapter 5: Pro Cicerone: The Fourth Catilinarian
- Chapter 6: Catiline in the Underworld and Afterwards
- APPENDIX 1: A Catilinarian Chronology, 108-57 BC
- APPENDIX 2: Catiline's Surviving Words
- APPENDIX 3: Two Bowls Inscribed with the Names of Catiline and Cato
- Maps
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
D. H. Berry is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. He has published an edition of Cicero's
Pro P. Sulla Oratio (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries, 1996) and two volumes in Oxford World's Classics,
Cicero: Defence Speeches (2000) and
Cicero: Political Speeches (2006).
Summary
In this, the first book-length discussion of Cicero's Catilinarians, D. H. Berry considers how the speeches should be interpreted as literature. Can we treat them as representing what Cicero actually said? Or do we have to read them merely as political pamphlets from a later time?
Additional text
Berry, then, has produced an important book with which serious students of the Catilinarians will want to engage closely... He has diligently collected and sifted relevant evidence and has set out his case with flair. Building on the work of predecessors, he mounts a strong argument for extensive revision of Catil. 4 and parts of Catil 3. Perhaps Berry's main contribution is to formulate systematically how the publication of the speeches after an interval of two and a half years served Cicero's political interests in 60.
