Catiline | |
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 Detail of Catiline in Cesare Maccari's fresco (1882-1888) in Palazzo Madama | |
| Born | Lucius Sergius Catilina c. 108 BC |
| Died | early January 62 BC |
| Nationality | Roman |
| Occupation(s) | General and politician |
| Known for | Catilinarian conspiracy |
| Parents |
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Lucius Sergius Catilina (c. 108 BC – January 62 BC), known in English as Catiline (/ˈkætəlaɪn/), was a Roman politician and soldier best known for instigating the Catilinarian conspiracy—a failed attempt to violently seize control of the Roman state in 63 BC.
Born to an ancient patrician family, he joined Sulla during Sulla's civil war and profited from Sulla's purges of his political enemies, becoming a wealthy man. In the early 60s BC, he served as praetor and then as governor of Africa (67 – 66 BC). Upon his return to Rome, he attempted to stand for the consulship but was rebuffed; he then was beset with legal challenges over alleged corruption in Africa and his actions during Sulla's proscriptions (83 – 82 BC). Acquitted on all charges with the support of influential friends from across Roman politics, he twice stood for the consulship in 64 and 63 BC.
Defeated in the consular comitia, he concocted a violent plot to take the consulship by force, bringing together poor rural plebs, Sullan veterans, and other senators whose political careers had stalled. Crassus revealed the coup attempt – which involved armed uprisings in Etruria – to Cicero, one of the consuls, in October 63 BC, but it took until November before evidence of Catiline's participation emerged. Discovered, he left the city to join his rebellion. In early January 62 BC, at the head of a rebel army near Pistoria (modern-day Pistoia in Tuscany), Catiline fought a battle against republican forces. He was killed and his army annihilated.
Catiline's name became a byword for doomed and treasonous rebellion in the years after his death. Sallust, in his monograph on the conspiracy, Bellum Catilinae, painted Catiline as a symbol of the Roman Republic's moral decline, as much of a victim as a perpetrator, as his characterization of "a ravaged mind" (vastus animus) indicates.[1][page needed]