Catiline and the "Concordia Ordinum" - Historia Antigua

26 THE PHOENIX
one acceptable to creditor as well as to debtor, as Caelius, who wanted
outright cancellation, found to his sorrow.54 As for his indebtedness in
63 B.c., Caesar had Crassus to back him, and his political career was
just at the point where a provincial command, with all its opportunities
for recouping one's fortunes, seemed assured. And, as he was anxious
for the support of men of wealth, he would have to oppose any plan
for outright violation of the sanctity of contract. For these reasons
Caesar and Crassus must have made it quite clear to Catiline that he
could no longer rely on them for support, financial or political.
Catiline's feelings after the election are not hard to imagine. He
could not fail to realize that if events pursued their normal course he
was ruined-financially, socially, and politically. Two defeats made it
unlikely that his creditors would wait for him to try another time.
His hatred of the parvenu, Cicero, and the financiers, who had twice
prevented him from realizing his destiny as an aristocrat, was at a peak.
In his now desperate situation he must have viewed with even greater
disgust than before the new direction being taken by Caesar and Crassus.
To a man of his calibre a vigorous frontal attack on those responsible
for his plight would seem the only way out of his difficulties.
Up to and including the election, therefore, Cicero and his coalition
were the decisive political element. In the early part of the year the
concordia ordinum was able to defeat the major aims of the anti-optimates.
That defeat gave the initial impetus to a cleavage among them. The
events of the election campaign, where again Cicero and his coalition
played a dominant role, further developed the cleavage among the
opposition forces and forced them to travel widely divergent roads.
Caesar and Crassus revised their strategy and laid long-range plans to
bring the financiers to their side. Catiline, unable and disinclined to
follow such a policy, now that the constitutional road to his goal was
blocked, was obliged to think in terms of desperate and direct action,
if he was not to sink back forever into oblivion.55
IV
The formation of the conspiracy took place after the consular elections
in July, 63 B.c. and was the direct result of Catiline's defeat in those
"4Cicero, De Officiis, 11. 84; Caesar, De Bello Civili, iii. 1 and 20 ff.; Suetonius,
Divus ulius, 42. See discussion in Th. Mommsen, The History of Rome, vol. 5 (London,
1894), 317 f.; 398-402.
66A parallel is to be noted in the events in Upper Canada in 1836-7. Unyielding
resistance to demands for reform, and an election in which almost all the Reformers
went down to defeat precipitated a crisis. William Lyon Mackenzie and his militant
friends carried out an armed insurrection. Other Reformers, such as Robert Baldwin
and Marshall Spring Bidwell, refused to have anything to do with this violent course of
action (Wallace, The Family Compact, 114 ff.). My attention was drawn to this interesting
parallel by C. B. Sissons, Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Victoria College,
Toronto.