Fractured by formido: Plotting the Destabilizing Specter of Fear in Catiline’s War

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Cicero speaking against Catiline’s conspiracy in Cicerone denuncia Catilina (1880) by Cesare Maccari.

Fractured by formido: Plotting the Destabilizing Specter of Fear in Catiline’s War

By Gideon Gruel

 

In Catiline’s War, Sallust constructs the eponymous Catiline and his infamous conspiracy to overthrow the Republic as products of Rome’s advancing moral decay and indicts the largely confused counteraction of the Roman populace — the Senate together with the commons — thereto as likewise symptomatic of that decay. This was not a decay of wealth, empire, or political institutions, though these too eventually suffered, but a decay of the mind. For Sallust, this mental decay, its exact evolution muddled and difficult to perspicuously plot, is rooted in a gradual corruption of the way Romans conceptualized, competed for, and attained wealth and honor. Sallust nostalgically traces Rome’s trajectory from its hardy and austere beginnings to its later period of languish, where greed and ambition loomed large over the Roman psyche, eventually eliminating the concomitance of competition and harmony that once existed among citizens.1

Although ambition, and the competition that it fomented, had always existed as a central facet of Rome’s political administration, the decline that Sallust depicts suggests a new kind of ambition, one which “undermined trust, probity, and all other good qualities” and so draws a striking moral distinction between old and new Rome.2 Advancement within the Roman political scene during the Republican era occurred along the cursus honorum, a largely standardized political hierarchy of public offices and magistracies. In the cursus honorum, relatively low-ranking bureaucratic positions served as stepping stones to loftier ones with greater prestige and imperium, “the power to give orders and to exact obedience to them.”3 A Roman man’s success along this path was decided by “achievement and lineage,” which determined a politician’s “political clout.”4 A record of political achievement — including success in the polls, popular accomplishments as a magistrate, and notable valor in battle — was particularly important because young politicians had to prove they “merited [the] confidence and deference” that leadership entailed.5 Failure to win the confidence of the populace and of one’s patrician peers spelled more than a brief setback; rather, it denied one’s status among the optimi, Rome’s best men, which for a nobilis meant squandering the advantage of a prestigious lineage. The stakes were similarly high for a homo novus, a man who was the first in his family to serve in the Senate: such failure would render the familial legacy obscure for yet another generation. It is not unsurprising, therefore, to see a fear of the alienation and ignominy that accompany political failure — which I take to mean a lack of achievement — spring onto the political scene and initiate a change in Roman politics.

In this essay, I argue that Sallust illustrates a gaping moral incongruity between old and new Rome through contrasting vocabularies of courage and fear, eventually identifying fear as the perversion that upended Republican Rome. Sallust’s discussion of Rome’s decline paints moralizing depictions of an old Rome juxtaposed with a new Rome, and the diction he develops — which oscillates between courage (virtus) and fear (metus, timor, formido, and terror) — reifies a dichotomy wherein courage and virtue oppose fear and immorality.6 I posit that the uncertainty of attaining wealth, honors, renown, and other outward indications of success eventually warped Rome’s political and social processes of competition, driving Rome’s ruling men to a fear — not just as an emotion but as a group psyche — that precipitated the progressively Janus-faced tendencies of Roman politicians during the late Republic. The fear I draw out in this essay is akin to anxiety and rears its head in various ways among Rome’s populace. For example, while both patricians and plebeians in the Republic may have had an aversion to an enemy attack, the plebeians seemed to have feared for their physical safety along with the quotidian worries that comprise a rural lifestyle. The patricians, however, as it will soon become apparent, might have been more worried by the personal political impingement of such an attack, where wounds to one’s reputation and political clout would be graver than to one’s person. This fear fractured Roman political life, forcing fissures of misgiving and anxiety throughout the populace, soon spelling the Republic’s failure.

Sallust nostalgically portrays old Rome with imagery steeped in appeals to war, action, and courage, contextualizing the early epochs of Roman civilization as an idealistic foil to his account of Rome’s waning era. After briefly introducing Catiline and his framework for the decline of Rome as mental decay, Sallust begins to narrate a time before the decay to determine “by what means [our ancestors] kept the commonwealth.”7 Sallust’s reminiscing eye, turned back toward the parabolic prologue of the Italian peninsula, evinces a Rome much different from the one where Catiline takes the stage. In the early days, as the emergent city began to prosper, Sallust notes that Rome’s riches became a source of envy for its neighbors. Envy soon brought war. Although Rome proved to have “acquired friendships more by giving kindnesses than by receiving them,” most of its allies refused to go to war with Rome.8 Rome’s fair-weather friends succumbed to fear and sought wholly to avoid the impending conflict. Instead of lamenting this fickle favor, Rome met its aggressors in battle and “concentrated on quickness, preparation, mutual encouragement, and protecting by arms their freedom.”9 Though a largely untried city, Rome repelled its aggressors and emerged victorious. Sallust is clear that the Romans succeeded, in this struggle and the many to follow, by means of their virtus.10 This offers not only an account of Rome’s courage but also a comparison between such courage and that of its allies. Sallust emphasizes Rome’s distinctive virtus via the structure with which he reports this story: when Rome faced danger, it was fear that paralyzed their allies and courage that nevertheless brought them victory against their foes.

It is important to note that here virtus does not just mean courage or strength. Instead, the Romans seemed to lack any kind of self-doubt; neither grueling toil nor unbearable conditions nor war-ready enemies could cause the Romans to cower or second-guess themselves. Indeed, as the martial Romans faced off against their foes, whether as a matter of brute strength, tactical skill, or dexterous domestic policy, it seems that their “[virtus] had tamed everything.”11 Although Sallust offers no specific account of old Roman politics, it can be inferred from these military exploits that a similar virtusattended their magistrates. Thus the old Romans, as opposed to their allies and the new Romans, were not insecure about their abilities to compete and achieve, even when outnumbered by the enemy or spited by nature.12 The virtus that emboldened old Rome was stalwart and unfaltering in the face of failure, not ignorant of but disdaining the promised peril and uncertainty that attended war as well as politics.

Although virtus saturates his presentation of Rome’s fabled preludes, as Sallust’s history turns to recount later events, fear begins to appear as a political instrument that both motivates political actors and measures political effectiveness. Sallust himself experienced part of the political process that he critiques and seems motivated to write this history in part because it had warped his worldview and moral compass. Sallust explains that as a young politician he was “swept with an enthusiasm towards politics”; he began his career to seek and attain honor for its own sake.13 Despite that initial enthusiasm and commitment, however, young Sallust soon discovered the “daring, bribery, and avarice” that pervaded Rome’s political milieu to be almost unavoidable.14 Sallust eventually found that the process of attaining political offices, mediated by the cursus honorum, overcame both his youth and his ambition, pushing him to violate his own conscience and mimic the wicked comportment of other politicians.15 Indeed, Sallust’s deviation from the well-intending idealism with which he began his political career evidences an institutional process that corrupts otherwise good men. As Sallust proceeded through this process, his motivations changed. He explains that “[his] desire for honors afflicted [him] with the same reputation and resentment as it did the rest.”16 The desire that he cites here disguises fear: Sallust was corrupted because he feared that he would not achieve the honor he had set out to win. Upon entering the political scene, Sallust witnessed the moral decay that redefined the operation of honor and was himself subsumed therein, because there was nothing else for him in a system that demanded success. Although this success could be won by both moral and immoral actors, fear urged political participation via immoral shortcuts that mimicked successful outcomes.

Fear also finds its way into the oratorical fantasies that Sallust reports Catiline wove for his confidants. In one of his first speeches addressing his corrupted crew, Catiline declares that “if the commonwealth thrived” then “[they] would be a source of fear” to its ranking rulers.17 He imagines the fear that his prowess and energy would be able to impose upon the few powerful men steering what he sees as a lopsidedly-governed society, if only he had the financial resources to make such a challenge. Sallust writes Catiline’s delusion as “formidini essemus”: “we would be their fear.”18 It seems puzzling that even in this fictitious prosperity, Catiline’s plots revolved around fear. The way that Catiline constructs this counterfactual conditional statement is of consequence because he did successfully incite fear, and yet therein he found no political success.19 His comments indicate a conviction that fear undergirded Roman politics. It is fear that he felt — a fear that drove him to conspire against the existing powers and to subvert the system that caused his conscience to quake and his wealth to waste away.

The political lives of both Sallust and of Catiline reveal fear at the heart of late Republican politics. Political participation did not dole out distinctions for moral behavior but instead for successful behavior, which often amounted to attaining the cursus honorum’s constellation of public magistracies and finding ways to supplement those already exacting requirements to the benefit of one’s notoriety and fame (e.g., political prosecutions, exceptional munificence, and military success). Since a lack of honors meant a life of poverty and obscurity, Rome always had politicians, but like tepid water, tepid politicians tended to take the least resisting path: a path paved with cash, conspiracy, and corruption. It seems, therefore, that Rome’s politics came to tacitly necessitate a lack of honor, or at least a practically liberal conception thereof.

Besides its emergence as a tool to shape Roman politics, Sallust’s description of Catiline and his crew together with Catiline’s professed motivations for plotting against the Republic reveal that fear motivated his conspiracy: for some, it was fear of poverty, while others were driven by fear of obscurity. One of Sallust’s first descriptions of Catiline is that his corrupt character was pushed toward further depravity by both a lack of wealth and “a consciousness of his crimes.”20These fears inspired him to new heights of desperation as he conspired against the Republic. Although many of them were descended from Rome’s noted nobility, Cataline’s associates also tended toward depravity, and Sallust makes a special point of detailing the fear that suffused their participation. The men that Catiline approached as initiates in his murderous plot had “neither substance nor any good prospect”: many were spendthrift acolytes of Sulla, eager to take advantage of a destabilized Republic once more after squandering what they had plundered under the dictator.21 Sallust describes these men as of “the greatest need and the most daring,” highlighting that Catiline seemed to have recognized and sought out such characteristics when he chose his conspirators.22 Catiline’s men were desperate because they feared servitude and lusted for command, a fact Catiline exploited.23 They were mauled by Rome’s seemingly meritocratic political system and ready to politically reassert themselves by any means that suggested success. Catiline and his followers were insecure about their own ignominy and indigence because their efforts to succeed, obviously paltry, had yielded little. Instead of refocusing their efforts and honing their abilities, they sought to topple the system that had spurned them, to refashion the Republic in such a way as to quell their fear of failure.

Saying nothing of the malformed motives that drove him and his comrades to such reckless rebellion, Catiline’s process of attaining followers reveals a similar process of exploitation that, feeding on the insecurities of Rome’s youth, belies fear’s specter at the foundation of Roman politics. Although he maintained crowds of criminals close at hand, Catiline took special care to develop or, better, to debase adolescents, whose young minds were “still impressionable and flexible.”24 Catiline crafted his lures for these young men “depending on what burning enthusiasm each one had,” enthusiasms that were, up to then, largely unfulfilled: at that age, whores and horses attracted their fancy, but soon, it would be honors, wealth, and dominion.25 Although such desires may have been initially harmless, they indicate not just frivolous inclinations but also deeper insecurities: What if I never have sex? What if I never own a beautiful stallion? Though such notions seem trivial, it must be noted that these were boys who would someday aspire to the highest offices of Rome. Eventually, they would be asking questions like: What if I never attain great wealth? What if I never achieve renown? Catiline tapped into the insecurities of Rome’s youth because he recognized that he could become a soother of their fears and thus “make them beholden and loyal to himself.”26 To appease the proclivities of these young men, Catiline drew upon their fears and insecurities, and in satisfying them, he reified and perpetuated a cycle of achievement governed by fear of failure, wherein immoral means served as the surest way to fulfill the demands of Roman political life.

Fear seems to beget fear, for, insofar as Catiline’s ill-fated intrigue was impelled by fear, it also fomented among the Roman nobility an intense fear that caused the Senate to cower at his conspiracy. Upon partially discovering Catiline’s preparations against the Republic, Cicero exposed Catiline to the Senate, who elected to endow the consuls with “the highest command and jurisdiction” that Roman custom allowed, shirking the threat to their sovereignty instead of taking decisive action.27 Sallust notes that in these times, the Senate had grown accustomed to relinquishing their authority when it came to cases of “frightening business,” seeming to wash their hands of responsibility when success seemed too difficult to attain.28 Despite the alacrity with which they dumped this fearful matter on the consuls, some senators, namely Caesar and Cato, nimbly hurled accusations of fear at each other as the conspiracy became contained.

As he spoke against a measure to put a portion of the conspirators to death, Caesar belittled the proposal of Silanus, a consul designatus, to impose capital punishment on Cataline and the other offending Romans, remarking that fear compelled him to say such a thing.29 Similarly, Cato accused Caesar of fearing that other conspirators would rescue Catiline if he was allowed to leave, which may have been why a sympathetic Caesar still supported exile — even he feared the threat of the conspirators’ continued presence in Rome.30 Beyond the accusations themselves, the readiness with which these renowned Roman senators so effectively employed fear to besmirch each other seems to lay bare a great anxiety. Catiline’s attempt had been uncovered, and the Senate was well-positioned to act quickly, lest the Republic be truly threatened. Instead, fear delayed the Senate’s response to Cicero’s warning and punishment of the criminals.

As such claims crisscrossed between senators and magistrates, the Roman rabble experienced their own hysteria, uncovering a process of “trickle-down fear,” wherein the politicians passed on their fear to the people. The confusion of Catiline’s conspiracy threw the Roman commons into a fevered frenzy that manifested in their minds and bodies. Sallust describes people hurrying from place to place and, with trembling aspects, catastrophizing their then-present situation.31There was neither war nor peace, and each person contemplated these “dangers by his own dread.”32 This fear, however, is not the same kind of fear that Sallust develops as the impulse behind the corruption of Roman politics, though it is derived therefrom. The Roman commons, barring popular unrest or military exploits, are rarely included in depictions of Rome, especially such empathetic ones. Here, Sallust develops an image of mass fear that punctuates the contrast between his depictions of old Rome and new Rome — between a people familiar with and hardened by martial action and a people moved to mania by intrigue and uncertainty. There is a stark contrast between the constancy of old Rome and the quickly panicked populace of new Rome, demonstrating a pathology that extends beyond the political and into the psyche of citizens of the new Rome.

A complex of historical forces converged to topple Rome, and Sallust’s history offers only a partial exegesis of the overtures that heralded the fall of the Roman Republic. The source of this fear that I have assayed to evidence through Sallust’s history is confused and insusceptible to a simple explanation. Despite that, Sallust’s Catiline’s War proves particularly helpful in diagnosing the causes of Republican Rome’s fall because it details the symptoms of an ailing city and recounts its political response to Catiline, who, like a virus, infiltrated Rome and turned the body politic against itself. This disease, however, did not begin with Catiline, who — along with others at sundry times — was “incited … by the community’s corrupt morals.”33 Instead, this disease progressed gradually, gaining ground, not by the efforts of a few, but by the inaction of many. As desire for money and power came to overwhelm the limits that honor had once placed on right action — honor being its own impetus for honorable action — cheap tricks and shortcuts replaced authentic effort as efficacious paths to mastery, renown, honor, wealth, and success in Roman political life. These tricks and shortcuts proliferated because lying, cheating, and stealing one’s way to prominence was easier than grinding out a spot in Rome’s politically packed environs. Eventually, it came to be that a Roman’s surest path to success, wherein he attained the greatest wealth and honor via the least effort, was by grift. Sallust remarks that Roman politicians, as they became increasingly beholden to this mindset, were only occasionally punished: the contamination soon overcame the community and changed it.34

Rome’s reflexive response to its own corruption was silence, one that Sallust likens to cattle’s silence.35 This is not an absence of sound — cattle indeed low quite loudly — but a silence of mind, for “nature has fashioned [them] to be prone and obedient to their stomachs.”36 Rome raised little ruckus as fear, replacing courage, became its motivating impulse. Once entrenched, fear silenced the Roman mind, disabling, except for in a few, the reflective capacity to resist avarice and ambition. As Sallust laments “hardly anyone at all in Rome was great in [virtus]” and even fewer were like Cato, who “preferred to be, rather than to seem, a good man.”37 Cato did not craft his image in a way that brought him fame; rather, it was the veracity of his integrity, a quality in short supply during the late Republic, which inspired his renown. Cato, however, never had to fear obscurity. His wealth and family name guarded him from the infelicities of failure and poverty, and so not all could mirror his moral meticulousness. Instead, most Romans, like Catiline and his crew, were driven by fears of failing Rome’s game of life and endeavored to trade in their honor for the trappings of political success.

 

Gideon M. Gruel is in his third year at Dartmouth College studying Classics and Philosophy. He finds that studying the ancient world, in its distinction as well as its delusion, unveils insights for our present time.

 

Endnotes

  1. Sallust, Catiline’s War, The Jurgurthine War, Histories, ed. and trans. A. J. Woodman (London: Penguin Classics, 2008), 9.1.
  2. Ibid., 10.4.
  3. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., s.v. “Imperium.”
  4. Tatum, “Politics and Clout,” 257.
  5. Ibid., 258.
  6. Woodman’s translation of Catiline’s War translates the Latin virtus as “prowess.” Although this translation is accurate and denotes a particularly active meaning that may prove productive in certain ways, I have chosen to render virtus as “courage,” specifically a virtuous or honorable courage.
  7. Sallust, Catiline’s War, 5.9.
  8. Ibid., 6.5.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Ibid., 7.5.
  12. Ibid., 7.7.
  13. Ibid., 3.3.
  14. Ibid.
  15. Ibid., 3.4.
  16. Ibid., 3.5.
  17. Ibid., 20.7.
  18. Ibid.
  19. A counterfactual conditional statement is a grammatical construction that references an action that could have been, but is not, realized: it is an unattained reality. Here, Cataline’s protasis contains the reality that could have been but was not and the reality that he references is one in which he rules by fear.
  20. Sallust, Catiline’s War, 5.7.
  21. Ibid., 21.1.
  22. Ibid., 17.2.
  23. Ibid., 20.17.
  24. Ibid., 14.5.
  25. Ibid., 14.6.
  26. Ibid.
  27. Ibid., 29.3.
  28. Ibid., 29.2.
  29. Ibid., 50.
  30. Ibid., 52.14.
  31. Ibid., 31.1–3.
  32. Ibid., 31.2.
  33. Ibid., 5.8.
  34. Ibid., 10.6.
  35. Ibid., 1.1.
  36. Ibid.
  37. Ibid., 53.5; 54.6.

 

Bibliography

Derow, Peter Sidney. “Imperium.” In The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, 3rd ed., 751–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Sallust. Catiline’s War, The Jurgurthine War, Histories. Edited and translated by A. J. Woodman. London: Penguin Classics, 2008.

Tatum, W. Jeffrey. “The Practice of Politics and the Unpredictable Dynamics of Clout in the Roman Republic.” In A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic, edited by Dean Hammer, 257–274. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015.