Journal Article

Sallust and Catiline: Conspiracy Theories

Woodman, A J

2021

Overview

According to C. E. Stevens, the difficulties of modern scholars go back to antiquity itself: 'actual sources make clear', he says, that there is a problem and that it was 'most difficult to solve', in support of which he quotes Sallust (18.2 'de qua quam uerissume potero dicam') and Asconius (92.15 'fuit opinio').6 It is worth looking at these two passages in more detail. Reynolds adopted quis for the manuscripts' quibus because that is the form given by the fourth-century grammarian Diomedes when he quotes the sentence (1.445.23K); but Reynolds declined to follow Diomedes in writing breuissume where the manuscripts have uerissume.7 Now it is quite true that the same phrase quam uerissume potero was used by Sallust earlier at 4.3; but there the words are part of a larger argument (4.2) in which he is presenting himself as an unbiased writer, for which ueritas and its cognates are standard terms.8 It is not obvious that bias is in question in the present digression, and it may be suspected that editors such as Reynolds have preferred uerissume both because they think it refers straightforwardly to 'truth' in the sense of 'non-fiction' and because it suits the modern consensus that there is something strange about the first conspiracy. Seager's 'important' point about the date given by the commentator collapses once we see that his conclusion is based upon a different passage from the one which he presents as his evidence. Since the precise sequence of events is repeatedly emphasised by Seager in his discussion of the evidence, which he summarises by tabulating its eight components in chronological order in order to demonstrate 'the growth of the myth',15 it is inevitable that his mis-inference from Asconius will have consequences elsewhere. [...]he says that 'The supposed earlier plan ... first makes its appearance at the time of the trial of Sulla', that is, in mid-62.16 This repeats a previous statement that the Pro Sulla 'is the first mention ... of any conspiracy planned during the year 66',17 and it is indeed a key element of his argument that the 'myth' of a first conspiracy involving Catiline arose no earlier than 62; it is presumably this supposition which explains why Seager feels justified in eliding the three items of evidence which pre-date 62.18 Yet we have already seen that Cicero in the In toga candida, delivered two years beforehand in mid-64, refers to an earlier plot by Catiline which, as may be inferred from an uncontaminated reading of Asconius 92.11-20, was conceived in 66;19 and at In Catilinam 1.15, delivered in November 63, Cicero refers precisely to a plan of 66 to kill the consuls of 65, exactly as Sallust says (18.5).

• Publisher: Franz Steiner Verlag
• Subject: Conspiracy