Catiline was a Roman general of a noble family. He plotted, or so we are told, to overthrow the republic, and in the end he died valiantly in battle, after his schemes were thwarted.
Julius Caesar supported Catiline, and after Catiline’s defeat, Caesar eventually succeeded in overthrowing the republic. To Caesar, history has given a heroic status. For Catiline, who was defeated, his enemies wrote his story, and so he comes down to us not a hero, but a man accused of the most heinous crimes and vices imaginable, from corruption and avarice to child sacrifice.
Catiline is a case study in how the loudest voices in history, or the most persistent, can drown out or obfuscate the actual facts about what happened; because of the historians’ bias against Catiline, it is difficult to know exactly what his true motives were, or what kind of a person he was.
It is my hope that these pages will inspire their readers to think twice about Catiline, and about the many, many aspects of our world that are talked about every day, colored by assumptions so deep that they are barely visible.
I intend to be not just an advocate for a second look at common aspects of our world, but also an advocate for the intense scrutiny of an opinion that is held as popular, or common sense – like the notion held until modern times that Catiline was a depraved villain. I believe that truth emerges through vigorous debate, debate which includes every point of view, even if most are in the end rejected.
Often, people are afraid to stand up for the less popular points of view, afraid that they will be considered morally corrupt or ostracized if they question the conventional wisdom, even if that wisdom is so old that people no longer understand its origin. The historians say that as the orator Cicero excoriated Catiline in front of the Roman Senate, exposing his plots and vilifying him, the other senators gradually edged away from him until at the end of the speech, an entire half of the room was empty except for Catiline. The senators had heard Cicero’s perspective, and before Catiline spoke, concluded his guilt.
I will be an advocate on behalf of Catiline.
[...] On Catiline [...]