Catiline and the "Concordia Ordinum" - Historia Antigua

CATILINE AND THE CONCORDIA ORDINUM 21
is right in depicting Cicero's attitude. Cicero did not execute a political
volte-face in 63 B.c. His policy and actions in that year were a logical
consequence of his ties both with the tax-farmers and with a section of
the nobility. If some of his pronouncements and actions had been
"popular" in a limited sense, they had never been revolutionary. And
to be elected consul, something that had not happened to a man without
noble ancestors for a generation, it was absolutely essential that both
tax-farmers and the ruling clique give him enthusiastic support.28
In his canvass for the consulship in 64 B.C. Cicero relied heavily on
the advice and personal support of his good friend Atticus.29 Atticus,
a business man primarily concerned with large loans and real estate,
had left Rome years before to avoid entanglements in the political
squabbles of his youth. He had, therefore, been able to maintain
friendship not only with business people but also with powerful noble
families, including members of the Family Compact. He was the ideal
person to give Cicero advice and support. As has been pointed out,
the importance of Atticus in determining Cicero's policy and success
has often been overlooked.29 Atticus was with Cicero in Rome in
64 B.c., and must have been extremely helpful in winning for him the
backing of the optimates.
The political situation in 64 B.c., moreover, was in Cicero's favour.
Intrigue by Crassus and Caesar against Pompey, and doubts about the
political intentions of all three great leaders, brought the tax-farmers
and the Family Compact very close together. The tax-farmers had
succeeded in getting their man Pompey to work on opening up new
areas for investment, and they feared that schemes which upset the
organization of the state would interfere with the realization of the
profits they were expecting. At the moment, therefore, they were
conservative in outlook. The optimates naturally did not want the
precedent set by Pompey's extraordinary powers to go any further.
Thus it was not difficult for Cicero to unite the two groups and win their
combined support. The fragments of his speech In Toga Candida show
us how he did this. He attacked two of his competitors, Antonius and
Catiline, and their backers, Caesar and Crassus, as revolutionaries bent
on destroying the state.30 As champion of law and order it was a
simple matter for him to head the polls. He was successful also in
procuring the defeat of Catiline. Actually, although the fullest harmony
of the orders-the most powerful sections of the equestrian and senatorial
classes-was not reached until 63 B.C., Cicero's election was a
symbol of the existence of that harmony as early as July, 64 B.c.3"
There was nothing about Catiline prior to 63 B.C. to mark him off
28Strasburger, Concordia Ordinum, 13 ff. For the combined voting power of the
two orders see Marsh, History of the Roman World, app. 2.
29Alice H. Byrne, Titus Pomponius Atticus (Lancaster, Pa., 1920), 1-4; 54 ff.
3oAsconius, In Orationem in Toga Candida, ed. A. C. Clark (Oxford, 1907), 93;
cf. 83.
31Strasburger, Concordia Ordinum, 38. See Cicero, De Lege Agraria, 11. 3 ff.;
In Pisonem, 3.