the energy of a felon,
and that horrible mastery of vice, which knows how to bring the weak
to fall and how to train the fallen to crime.

To form out of such elements a conspiracy for the overthrow
of the existing order of things could not be difficult to men
who possessed money and political influence. Catilina, Piso,
and their fellows entered readily into any plan which gave the prospect
of proscriptions and cancelling of debtor-books; the former had
moreover special hostility to the aristocracy, because it had opposed
the candidature of that infamous and dangerous man for the consulship.
As he had formerly in the character of an executioner
of Sulla hunted the proscribed at the head of a band of Celts
and had killed among others his own aged father-in-law
with his own hand, he now readily consented to promise similar services
to the opposite party. A secret league was formed. The number
of individuals received into it is said to have exceeded 400; it
included associates in all the districts and urban communities
of Italy; besides which, as a matter of course, numerous recruits
would flock unbidden from the ranks of the dissolute youth
to an insurrection, which inscribed on its banner the seasonable
programme of wiping out debts.

Failure of the First Plans of Conspiracy

In December 688--so we are told--the leaders of the league thought
that they had found the fitting occasion for striking a blow.
The two consuls chosen for 689, Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius
Autronius Paetus, had recently been judicially convicted
of electoral bribery, and therefore had according to legal rule
forfeited their expectancy of the highest office. Both thereupon
joined the league. The conspirators resolved to procure
the consulship for them by force, and thereby to put themselves
in possession of the supreme power in the state. On the day
when the new consuls should enter on their office--the 1st Jan. 689--
the senate-house was to be assailed by armed men, the new consuls
and the victims otherwise designated were to be put to death, and Sulla
and Paetus were to be proclaimed as consuls after the cancelling
of the judicial sentence which excluded them. Crassus was then
to be invested with the dictatorship and Caesar with the mastership
of the horse, doubtless with a view to raise an imposing military
force, while Pompeius was employed afar off at the Caucasus.
Captains and common soldiers were hired and instructed; Catil