Catiline and the "Concordia Ordinum" - Historia Antigua

CATILINE AND THE CONCORDIA ORDINUM 29
A word of caution is necessary here. Debt was not the cause of
the conspiracy. It is true that heavy indebtedness made many favour
drastic action; that it was those in financial distress to whom Catiline
appealed for support; that among the conspirators themselves debt was
one of the most urgent disabilities. But the initiation of action came
from those who had been driven into a tight corner by the success of
Cicero's efforts to maintain the concordia ordinum. That is to say, the
economic situation provided the opportunity for rousing support for a
protest movement, but it was the political situation that actually gave
the impetus to the creation of the conspiracy.
The development of the conspiracy can now be described with precision.
Cicero's campaign to keep the financiers and the Family Compact
together created a cleavage among the anti-optimates and forced Catiline
into a position from which he could extricate himself only by strong
measures. He found a number of those who had supported him in his
second canvass willing to follow him. Debt and general discontent
throughout Italy, which the repressive policies of the government had
considerably augmented, made the occasion seem favourable. Initially,
the conspiracy aimed merely at substituting an anti-optimate consul,
Catiline, for the optimate one, Cicero. But, when Cicero was successful
in rendering that plan impracticable, the conspirators were forced along
the road to a general social upheaval. The decisive element throughout
had been Cicero and his temporary alliance of the financiers with the
optimates.64
V
In its dinouement the conspiracy had an effect upon the concordia
ordinum. Cicero in his Fourth Catilinarian states: "Brought back after
years of disagreement with this order [the senatorial class] to alliance
and harmony with it, they [the financiers] have been brought into
union with you by this day and this affair."66 Strasburger gives content
to this statement by showing that on this occasion, the fifth of December,
the equites took up arms and registered as an emergency police force,
indicating by this overt action their identification with the optimates.66
Atticus, incidentally, the one man most capable of bridging the gap
between the two groups, was in command of this force.67 The revelations
of the conspiracy, therefore, strengthened the concordia ordinumjust
what Caesar and Crassus had been trying to prevent. The conspiracy
also placed Crassus and Caesar in a somewhat dangerous position.
The immediate political effect of the conspiracy, therefore, was to aid
the optimates.
64The unknown author of a speech against Cicero puts forward much the same
thought from a partisan point of view (In Ciceronem Declamatio, 2. 3).
61In Catilinam, Iv. 7. 15.
66Concordia Ordinum, 42.
s6Ad Atticum, II. 1. 7.