their first leader,
Christus, who had suffered the extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate,
procurator of Judaea, in the reign of Tiberius.

A very widespread conspiracy was now formed against Nero, in favour of
one Gaius Calpurnius Piso; Faenius Rufus, an officer of the Praetorians,
who had been subordinated to Tigellinus, being one of the leaders. The
plot, however, was betrayed by a freedman of one of the conspirators.

* * * * *

SALLUST

The Conspiracy of Catiline

The Roman historian Caius Crispus Sallust, who was born at
Amiternum in 86 B.C., and died in 34 B.C., lived throughout
the active career of Julius Caesar, and died while Anthony and
Octavian were still rivals for the supreme power. It might be
supposed from his works that he was a person of eminent
virtue, but this was merely a literary pose. He was probably
driven into private life, in the first place, on account of
the scandals with which he was associated. He became a
partisan of Caesar in the struggle with Pompey, and to this he
owed the pro-consulship of Numidia, on the proceeds of which
he retired into leisured ease. Sallust aspired with very
limited success to assume the mantle of Thucydides, and the
role of a philosophic historian. He displays considerable
political acumen on occasion, but his assumption of stern
impartiality is hardly less a pose than his pretense of
elevated morality. His "Conspiracy of Catiline"--the first of
his historical essays--was probably written, in part at least,
with the object of dissociating Caesar from it; the lurid
colors in which he paints the conspirator are probably
exaggerated. But whether true or false, the picture presented
is a vivid one. This epitome is adapted specially from the
Latin text.

_I.--The Plotting_

I esteem the intellectual above the physical qualities of man; and the
task of the historian has attracted me because it taxes the writer's
abilities to the utmost Personal ambition had at first drawn me into
public life, but the political atmosphere, full of degradation and
corruption, was so uncongenial that I resolved to retire and devote
myself to the production of a series of historical studies, for which I
felt myself to be the better fitted by my freedom from the influences
which bias the political partisan. For the first of these s