Three Simple Questions for Teaching Cicero's "First Catilinarian"

Christopher P. Craig

The Classical Journal, Vol. 88, No. 3. (Feb. - Mar., 1993), pp. 255-267.

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THE FORUM

THREE SIMPLE QUESTIONS FOR TEACHING

CICERWSFIRST CATILJNARZAN

Some of my third-year undergraduate students find Cicero's first

Catilinarian Oration, and thus Cicero himself, disorganized, repetitive
and boring. This is of course an egregious heresy. While we have all
wrestled with the structure and repetitions in the speech, the idea that
Cicero's attack on Catiline would not engage a student's interest seems
perverse. The First Catilinarian is after all the most famous piece of
Roman prose largely because it is pedagogically almost perfect;
within the brief space of fourteen Oxford pages, in which we find
almost every type of dependent subjunctive clause in Latin, Cicero
portrays an intensely dramatic situation in which good battles against
evil, with the fate of Rome hanging in the balance. Generations of young
Latinists have found the drama thrilling, and have come to know both
Latin and the Romans better because of it. So, if all your students,
unlike some of mine, find the first Catilinarian as enthralling as they
should, what follows is superfluous. Please read no further.
For the rest of us, I want to share a very simple method, developed
over several years, that helps students to decide upon a structure, to
understand the repetitions, and to savor the high drama of the speech.
Although this method has emerged from experience with third-year
college Latin classes, it may be partially adaptable for use in the high
school classroom as well.
First, a word about my third-year class: While this first "upper
level" class does have literary concerns, its primary goal is still to read
and understand Latin. The group, which meets three hours per week,
regularly consists of less than a dozen students. We read the first
Catilinarian after having begun with the first thirty-one sections of
Sallust's Bellum Catilinae, for which we use Ramsey's fine edition in
the APA textbook series.' So when we come to the first Catiiinarian,
students already know the landscape. Our text is the Bristol edition of
Gould and ~ h i t e l e ~chosen
; because, although dated, it is generally

'
J. T. Ramsey, Sallust's Bellurn Catilinae, American Philological Association
Textbook Series, no. 9 (Atlanta: Scholars Press 1984).
H. E. Gould and J. L. Whiteley, eds., Cicero In Catilinam 1 & 11 (Bristol:Bristol
The Classical Journal 88.3 (1993)255-67
256 CHRISTOPHER P. CRAIG

helpful and is not exorbitantly priced. The first assignment in the speech
is short, about 15 lines, so that we can work through any groundless
Cicerophobia. Thereafter, assignments roughly correspond to the
thirteen chapters of the speech.
While understanding the Latin is our primary goal, it is also
important that we enjoy the speech as a work of literature. But for
some odd reason, the normal tools that these students would use to
enjoy a text in English are, literally, lost in translation. Among these
evanescent skills is the ability to do close reading. So I find myself
making explicit that they would get a lot more out of the speech if
they pulled back from the subjunctives in secondary sequence and
the passive periphrastics, and put themselves in Cicero's place. I
encourage them to ask themselves at the beginning of every sentence,
or at least at the beginning of every paragraph, not only what they
have just read, but what they expect Cicero to say next. I ask this
question at the end of our prepared translation every class period, just
to keep them looking ahead with the sense that there is an oratorical
problem to be solved as well as a passage to be translated.

THE PAMPHLET AS SPEECH

Initially, this emphasis on what they could expect next seemed

to engage my students only in a desultory way. So I decided that it
would be helpful to have them read a good, thorough analysis of the
persuasive process of the speech. I was surprised to find that none
exists in ~ n ~ l i sInstead,
h . ~ scholars writing in English feel the need
to explain what they perceive as the opacity of the structure, the
apparent irrelevance of some of Cicero's utterances, and the general
feeling of unreality that they sense in the speech? The standard expla-
nation is that our oration is very far from a transcript of what Cicero
said in the Temple of Jupiter Stator on November 8 of 63. The speech
was published three years later (Att. 2.1.3). In 60, Cicero had already
come under severe criticism for his handling of the conspiracy, most
especially for the execution without trial of those five Catilinarians on

Classical Press, 1982 [reprint of MacMiLlan edition of 19431).

The most thorough analysis of the persuasive process of the Catilinarians is
still H. Bornecque, Les catilinaires de Cictron: etude et analyse (Paris 1936). For the first
Catilinarian, see more recently A. Primmer, "Historisches und Oratorisches zur ersten
Catilinaria,"Gymnasium 84 (1977) 1838, with lit.
See especially R. G. M. Nisbet, "The Speeches," in T. A. Dorey, ed., Cicero
(London 1964) 47-49 & esp. 60-64; G. A. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman
World (Princeton 1972) 17542, esp. 176-77.
 TEACHING CICERO'S FIRST CATILLVANAN 257

that immortal Nones of December. So the document we have contains

certain passages that, in the common scholarly view, make little sense
in the setting of November of 6.3, but have a certain political value for
Cicero in 60. Robin Nisbet, in his famous article on the speeches, nicely
sums up:5

In the first speech Cicero seems too anxious to justify the

expulsion of Catiline;in view of his resistance in the field, many
Romans must afterwards have wondered whether it was
necessary to turn him loose. There is too much irrelevant
invective; when faced with a concrete and urgent problem did
the Roman senate really waste time with this stuff? The patria in
magniloquent periods addresses first Catiline and then Cicero
(i.18 and i.27); one does not seem to be listening in on a real
debate in one of the most hard headed assemblies that the world
has known.

One might infer from this that honesty compels us simply to

admit to our students that the first Catilinarian is a tendentious
pamphlet masquerading as an oration, and to concede that any
attempt to read it as an actual speech is thus misguided.
Although the oration certainly has the effect of such a pamphlet, I
still reject the notion that we cannot properly read it as a speech. I do
so because, as George Kennedy has observed, ". . .we cannot say with
certainty of any passage in the Catilinarians that it must have been
added or revised later."6 How do we know, except through Cicero,
what his listening audience would find appropriate? More important,
there are Cicero's own statements on why he publishes his speeches.
As Wilfried Stroh demonstrated more than fifteen years ago? Cicero
claims that he is publishing his speeches as exemplars for aspiring youth
to study. He may have other equally important agendas, such as
making a political pamphlet. But if we take Cicero at his word, we can
be confident that no motive is more important than his desire to
educate. And his speeches serve as exemplars to educate only in-
sofar as they depict what he would need to say to persuade a specific
listening audience in a given set of circumstances. He may publish a
speech with some changes, or even a speech that he never delivered,
as with the actio secunda in Verrem or the second Phili~ic,but it will still

Nisbet (note 4 above) 62-63.

Kennedy (note 4 above) 177.

W. Stroh, Taris und Taktik: dieadoocatische Dispositionskunst Ciceros Gerichtsreden

(Stuttgart 1975) 31-54, esp. 51-54.
258 CHRISTOPHER P. CRAIG

represent what would work in a given set of circumstances. We must

admit that we can never know verbatim what Cicero actually said.
Nonetheless, the proper way to appreciate one of his speeches as
oratory is precisely to treat it as a transcript.

THREE SIMPLE QUESTIONS

Having decided that we have the right to read the speech as a

transcript, lacking an English treatment that does so in a thorough
way, and faced with students for whom translation and thoughtful
reading seemed to be mutually exclusive alternatives, I clearly needed
to give my young Latinists some rudimentary tools.8 These tools take
the form of three simple questions:

1) Context: Why does Cicero have to speak at all?

2) Persuasive Goals: What is Cicero trying to persuade his hearers to

feel or to do?

3) Rhetorical Challenge: What problems stand in the way of

achieving Cicero's persuasive goals?

I answer the first question for them, and ask them to keep the other
two in mind as they work through their homework assignments.
Regarding persuasive goals (question 2), I emphasize that these goals
may be different for different parts of the audience. For example,
Cicero tries to persuade the senate that Catiline is a public enemy, but
he concurrently tries to persuade Catiline that the senate perceives him
as a public enemy, and thus he might as well leave Rome. Similarly, I
emphasize that the rhetorical challenge (question 3) will be different
for different parts of the audience.
I stress to my students that answering these three questions will
give us a clear sense of what the speech is about. I further stress that in
a good speech, every sentence moves towards the persuasive goal.
There may be amplificatio, but there is no padding. If they do find
sentences or arguments that do not seem to move effectively towards
the persuasive goals, they must at least try to go back to the three
questions, and to rethink their understanding of the basic context,
persuasive goals, or rhetorical challenge in order to render these
passages more relevant or sensible. After all, the published speech is a

Your students may be much better at seeing forest and trees concurrently, and
you may find the following approach simple-hearted. If so, I know that you count
your blessings.
 TEACHING CICERO'S FIRST CATlLINARlAN 259

type of literature. Within the limits imposed by our knowledge of

events, they must exercise their imaginations.

PROCEDURE

On the day we complete the first 15 line assignment, I provide my

own answer to question 1 and suggest some general answers to the
questions of persuasive goals and rhetorical challenge as well. I then
ask them to read sentence by sentence with special attention to what
Cicero is trying to accomplish both with Catiline and with the senate. I
constantly emphasize that there is no "right" interpretation, only
answers that fit more or less closely with what we find in the text,
supplemented by what we learn from other sources.
At the end of chapter IV, at section 1 0 a , ~ we pause for another
discussion in which they offer their own senses of Cicero's persuasive
goals and the rhetorical challenge. We pause here because we are
one full week into the text on a MWF schedule. Here is where they
usually articulate how many subgroups in the audience they feel
Cicero is trying to address. My last group defined five: Catiline, other
conspirators, anti-Catilinarians, skeptics, and those who just don't know
what to believe. Since our first business at this level is simply reading
the Latin, we address the impact on these subgroups only as time
permits. Then, when we have finished the speech, we devote three
whole class periods to a linear review with attention to their views of
the persuasive goals and rhetorical challenge reflected in each chapter.
From this review and discussion, which can be quite lively, their
individual answers to the three questions emerge in virtually
definitive form. Finally, they turn in an outline of the argumenta-
tion of the speech, no more than five typed pages, in which they
briefly state their understanding of Cicero's persuasive goals and
the rhetorical challenge, posit a structure for the speech, and focus
upon the passages which most vividly support their interpretations.

SOME TYPICAL FINAL ANSWERS TO

THE THREE QUESTIONS

1) Why does Cicero have to speak at all? (Usually to be answered by

the teacher.)

Roman numerals correspond to the bold Arabic chapter numbers in Jenney and
most other high school texts. Arabic numerals correspond to the smaller section
260 CHRISTOPHER P. CRAIG

Cicero calls the meeting of the senate to give an update on his

knowledge of the conspiracy. His principal news will be that Catiline,
who is supposedly under the custody of a fellow senator because of an
impending prosecution, has fled the City. This flight is presumptive
proof of Cicero's allegation that Catiline is the guiding force behind
the rebel army in Etruria.
When Catiline surprises Cicero by coming into the senate, he pulls
the evidentiary rug out from under the orator, leaving him nothing
absolutely compelling to say.'' still, Cicero has to say something, since
the alternative is to admit defeat and adpurn the meeting. (Some third
year students wish that Cicero has chosen this second course.)

2) What is Cicero trying to persuade his hearers to say or do?

Of course he is finally trying to persuade Catiline to leave Rome.

But my students have found the situation more complex. In my last
class, half of the group decided that the orator's initial persuasive goal
is not to persuade Catiline at all. Rather it is to persuade the senate
to support him in an order to have Catiline executed. It is clear to
all of us that the ultimate decree of the senate (SCU) of October 21
had already arguably given Cicero this power, but that he is not
courageous or foolish enough to use it without senatorial approval.
For my bolder students (and I follow their interpretation here because
it is as coherent as any other and is more exciting than most) Cicero
will first explore whether the senate is behind him in his bid to have
Catiline declared a public enemy. Failing that, the orator adopts the
fallback position that Catiline must leave the City. He will argue that
Catiline should do so since the senate hates him so much that he
cannot further profit his cause by staying in Rome. But to persuade
Catiline that the senate as a body hates him, Cicero must concurrently
try to persuade the senate that they as a body hate Catiline.

3) The Rhetorical Challenge: What are the problems?

My students' scope for creativity in answering this question is in

their close analysis of the argument. The main problem in convincing
the senate to support Cicero in ordering the execution of Catiline is

divisions used for citation in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, in most college texts and in
the modem scholarship. If the break between chapters divides one of these smaller
sections, the two parts of the smaller section are labelled "a" and '%".
' O Cf. D. Stockton, Cicero, A Political Biography (New York-Oxford 1971)117-19;
E. Rawson, Cicero: A Portrait (rev. ed. Ithaca 1983) 74-75.
 TEACHING CICERO'S FIRST CATILINARIAN 261

one that I make clear in answering question 1, since it is not strongly

emphasized in most of the textbooks I have seen; there is NO hard
evidence against Catiline. Besides, there is a prejudice against Cicero
as an over-aggressive, self-important novus homo whose dire predic-
tions about the slaughter of optimates and the attack on Praeneste have
already proven false. My bolder students (and again I follow them for
the sake of this example) would argue that these problems finally prove
insurmountable. Cicero fails.
So Cicero goes to the fallback position that Catiline must leave the
City. But just as Cicero does not have senatorial support to execute
Catiline, nor does he have the support to order Catiline into exile. The
senate is not sufficiently hostile to Catiline to punish him. So the orator
must plead entirely in the arena of perceived attitudes: He must try to
persuade Catiline that, even if the senate will not move against him,
they are so hostile that it is useless to stay. In order to accomplish this,
he must concurrently try to persuade each member of the senate that
the body as a whole is !ntensely hostile to Catiline. If the senate
appears uniformly hostile, the appearance becomes the reality, and
Cicero succeeds. But that appearance can be threatened at any time by
the hard fact that the senate is not hostile enough towards Catiline to
take action against him.
As if this were not enough of a rhetorical challenge, Cicero's very
use of a fallback strategy leads him into contradictions. If a man is
dangerous enough to be executed, how can one justify letting him
escape from the City?

A WORKING STRUCTURE

Given the background I provide to answer question 1, and the

answers that they work out to the persuasive goals and to the
moment-by-moment dynamic of the rhetorical challenge (questions 2
and 3), they build a broad structure of the speech in such a way that
there is arguably nothing superfluous. From sample answers such
a s those given above, they construct this type of structure: First,
Cicero tries to make the strongest case that the senate should support
him in having Catiline executed (1.1-1V.lOa). Second, he tries to make
the strongest case to Catiline and the senate concurrently that the
senate is so uniformly hostile to the conspirator that Catiline might as
well leave the City at this point (V.10b-X.27a). Third, Cicero tries to
address the natural objection to his contradictory behavior (X.27b-
XIII.32). He says that Catiline deserves death, then allows him to
escape to do further harm.
262 CHRISTOPHER P. CRAIG

Contrast this simple structure with that given in ~ e n n e ~ .In"

Jenney, the citing of precedents for the killing of a seditious citizen (I.
vv.16-28-11) is called the narration, while the recitation of the rise
of Manlius' army, the alleged plots to kill the Optimates on October
28, to attack Praeneste on November 1, to kill Cicero on the previous
morning (III-IV), are classified not as narration but as confimzatio, or
argumentation. It is clear that the traditional divisions of a speech,
especially a judicial speech, into exordium, narration, argumentation,
and peroration just do not work well for the first Catilinarian. There is
some question about whether there is a proper exordium at and
the narration and argumentation are hopelessly, happily commingled.
So, while I applaud the editors of Jenney for impressing students that
the ancients did embrace a rhetorical theory that set up expectations
for the structure of a speech, elaborated conventional structures do
not fit this speech well. The attempt forcibly to impose such structures
on intractable material should not be allowed to distract our students
from the progress of the argument.

A TYPICAL ANALYSIS

The five-page paper includes both answers to the three questions

and an outline/analysis that shows how the argument works in light
of the student's answers to those questions. Here is a sample of such
an outline/analysis. Actually, what follows is an amalgam of several
student papers, recast meis verbis. My students, especially in this
most recent class, have been chiefly interested in the moments that,
according to their interpretations, were most awkward for Cicero. I
have marked these moments with a double asterisk (**). It was
Cicero's response to these potentially embarrassing moments, rather
than the purity of his indignation or the enormity of Catiline's wicked-
ness, that they found the most engaging aspect of the speech.

ONE 1.1-1V.lOa. Ad mortem te, Catilina, duci iussu consulis iam

pridem oportebat.. ..
Cicero, addressing Catiline, makes his best case to the senators that
they should support him in having Catiline executed. This attempt fails.
1I
C. Jenney,Jr.,R. V. Scudder, D. D. Coffin, Third Year Latin (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ:Prentice Hall 1990) 70. I do not cite this text in order to single it out for special
criticism, but because it is perennially among the most popular, and thus influential,
texts used in high schools in this country.
12
See most recently the careful analysis of C. Loutsch, "L'exorde dit ex abrupt0
 TEACHING CICERO'S FIRST CATILNARIAN 263

1.1-2. Sets the tone and states the objective.

1.3. Mos Maiorum I: Cicero establishes general precedents
for killing seditious citizens.
"nos, nos, dico aperte, consules desumus." Cicero's self-
criticism, adumbrated at 1.2 "nos autem . . . tela vitemus"
and repeated at 11.4 "Cupio . . . nequitiaeque condemno," is
necessary. He tries to get the senate to act by depicting a
situation that should already have spurred them to action.
Thus the very fact that the senate has not yet acted can
become a criticism of the audience. The orator knows better
than to criticize his audience, so he takes the blame himself.
1.3-11.4. Mos Maiorum 11: fact that the Senatus Consultum Ulti-
mum has been passed and the precedents for killing seditious
citizens under that authority.
11.5. Army in Etruria. First charge against Catiline linked
to a known fact.
11.5 "Verum ego hoc"-111.6 "erumpunt omnia." Retrench-
ing. Senate has not picked u p the cue to call for action
against Catiline.
111.6 "Muta iam istam mentemn-III.8a. Evidence (none
conclusive) of Catiline's connection with Manlius and recent
revolutionary activity.
IV.8b-lOa. More unsupported evidence, this time of Catiline's
most recent activity, the meeting at Laeca's house, and the
attempt to have Cicero assassinated.
Video enim esse hic in senatu quosdam qui tecum una fuerunt.
A deeply disturbing idea to every decent member of the senate.
**At this point, a quick appraisal of his audience tells Cicero that,
despite his best effort, they are not about to rise as one and demand
Catiline's arrest. Without missing a beat, the orator moves to:

TWO V.10b-X.27a. Quae cum ita sint, Catilina, perge quo coepisti,
egredere aliquando ex urbe.

Here is the fallback position. Cicero, addressing Catiline, tries to

persuade him to leave Rome. The orator does so by pretending that
the senate as a whole is hostile to Catiline, and by concurrently
trying to persuade both Catiline and undecided members of the senate

d e la premiere Catilinaire de Cickron," REL 68 (1990) 31-49, with very thorough

bibliography.
 CHRISTOPHER P. CRAIG

that this is so. This attempt does crystallize so much hostility

towards Catiline that it become useless for him to stay in the
City. Cicero succeeds.
V.lOb. Statement of fallback position. Catiline must leave Rome.
V.11-12 "vastitatem vocas." More unsubstantiated charges to
keep the flames of hostility fanned.
V.12. "Quare quoniamN-"sentina rei publicae." First statement
of rationale for fallback position. It is more beneficial to the
republic for Catiline to leave than for him to be killed.
**V.l3a. "Quid est, Catilina?"-"suadeo." Another defeat.
Catilineasks whether Cicero is ordering him into exile. The
senate will not support such a move, and so the illusion of
general hostility to Catiline that Cicero is trying to maintain
and strengthen lies in ruins. "Non iubeo, sed, si me consulis,
suadeo" marks one of the most embarrassing moments in
the speech. Cicero's initiative is completely deflated.
VI.13b-VIII.19 "non possit." Cicero immediately tries to regroup
for another assault. The orator concurrently shifts the reasons
for Catiline's decision to leave from consular pressure to Cati-
line's own perceptions. "Quid est enim, Catilina, quod te iam in
hac urbe delectare possit?"
VI.13b-16a. Caught off balance, and determined to keep stoking
hostility against Catiline, Cicero falls back upon stock invective
topoi and vicious rumors, largely in praeteritio, followed by
more unsubstantiated charges, including the alleged "First
Ca tilinarian ~ o n s ~ i r a c ~ . " ' ~
VII.16b-VIII.19 "non possit?" Brilliant illustration that the
senate, even if they refuse explicitly to condemn Catiline, are
deeply suspicious and hostile towards him. This both sub-
stantiates and increases the senators' hostility and Catiline's
perception of it. Since the fallback position finally turns not upon
evidence of criminality, but upon the senate's attitude towards
Catiline, and his perception of that attitude, this passage is
at the heart of the fallback argument. The eloquence of the cap-
ping personification of patria is due in part to the fact that it
addresses what is now the central issue of the speech, and that

l3 Although Cicero's version of this conspiracy of 66-65 is taken as factual in

Jenney (note 10 above) 66, and in all of the school commentaries I have seen, most
Roman historians believe that it simply cannot have happened as Cicero describes it.
See the summary discussion in Ramsey (note 1 above) 237-39. The principal lit. is
collected by T. N. Mitchell, Cicero: The Ascending Years (New Haven 1979) 223
and note 94.
 TEACHING CICERO'S FlRST CATlLINARIAN 265

issue is purely concerned with feelingsrather than hard evidence.

VIII.19. "Quid, quod tun-"iudicarit?" Whether we imagine
Catiline responding to Patria or not, the audience would surely
have in mind that Catiline cannot be the pure source of anxiety
that Patria claims, since he has responded to a charge of sedi-
tious violence (vis) by asking to be placed in the custody of
responsible senators, including Cicero himself.This point does
tell against Cicero, so he cannot pass over it in silence. He makes
the best of the situation.
...
**VIII.20."Quae cum ita sint esse dicis." Catiline again tries
to shatter the appearance that the senate supports Cicero.
Just as he had asked if Cicero wereordering him to go into exile,
now he says that he will obey a decree of the senate to go into
exile. He knows that Cicero does not have senatorial support
for such an action, and he can dramatize that fact to the sena-
tors, thus crippling the illusion that Cicero is fostering in
each senator that the whole senate is actively hostile to Catiline.
Students and teachers may wish that Catiline could have kept
quiet here. If he had, Cicero, his crescendo intact, would have been
able to go directly to part THREE below. Instead, Cicero is constrained
to produce the following two and a half chapters.
After the blow of "Refer ad senatum," Cicero must move swiftly
and forcefully to recapture the sense of the senate's united hostility
towards Catiline.
VIII.20 "Egredere ex urbe"-21 "prosequantur." So, after
the mandatory strong imperative ordering Catiline to leave, to
free the fatherland from dread, Cicero again firmly plants his
argument in the evidence of the senate's hostility towards Cati-
line as reflected in their behavior. This argument decisively
regains the initiative. It is clear to everyone that the senate as a
body, while it will not act against Catiline without compelling
evidence, holds him in suspicion and contempt. For Cicero's
purpose, this is enough.
IX.22-X27a "Quamquam quid loquor?" Many students have
wanted to ask Cicero that same question. The orator has already
done what he can to vilify Catiline, and to insure that the senate
is overtly hostile to him. So this part of the argument may seem
to be outright padding (or, at least in part, a change from the
spoken to the published version).
But this section does have an organic role. Now Cicero
has succeeded in persuading Catiline that it is useless to stay in
Rome, but has not persuaded the senate to take any action.
266 CHRISTOPHER P. CRAIG

Thus Cicero's command to Catiline to leave the City still lacks

the all-important moral support of the senate. When Catiline does
leave the City, anyone not actively opposed to him may suppose
that Cicero has de facto driven a Roman citizen into exile. Thus
Cicero must underscore that Catiline is leaving by his own choice
rather than because of anything Cicero says, and that he is
leaving with the intention of joining his army of rebels.
The need for this emphasis, which underscores the contradiction
between his original position of having Catiline executed and his
fallback position of letting Catiline leave the City, makes it even more
important for Cicero to address his own inconsistency. This will be the
function of the next section of the argument.

THREE XI.27b-XIII.32

Cicero has now emphasized that Catiline is going of his own

free will, not into exile, but to command a force that will attack the
republic. But if this is so, Cicero should properly do everything to stop
him. It is already clear that Cicero will not act without the senate's
support, and that the senate has declined to support him (ONE above).
It will not do for Cicero to admit that he refuses to risk his political and
personal future by doing what is necessary even without the senate's
explicit approval. So the orator can do no better than to emphasize at
length the rationale concocted in V.12: it is more beneficial to allow
Catiline to leave the City than to arrest him. Still, Cicero's true colors
can be glimpsed in:
XII.29-30. "Quodsi ea ... non fateatur." The orator claims that
he is not restrained from acting by any fear, for he has always
thought that such hatred as he would incur by acting against
Catiline is not hatred but glory. Yet there are those supporters of
Catiline, and those ignorant of the true circumstances, who would
say that he was acting cruelly and tyrannically. But after Cati-
line's departure, no one will be so obtuse that he will not see or
so wicked that he will not concede Catiline's guilt.
If Cicero had no care for the hatred his actions might engender,
these considerations would be completely irrelevant.
Peroration, XIII.33. A final address to Catiline telling him to get
out of town, and concluding prayer to Jupiter Stator as the one who
will insure the traitors' punishment.

I hope that the description and examples above have made clear
how simple, and obvious, this method is. Some will surely take issue
 TEACHING CICERO'S FlRST CATILNARIAN 267

with the answers and observationsprovided in the examples. For these

purposes, I would say only that this amalgam of some of my students'
interpretations cannot be categorically refuted, and that it represents
their interpretations. Because the interpretations are their own, they
advance them with genuine enthusiasm. As surely as Cicero prevails
over Catiline, that enthusiasm will finally prevail over the perverse
judgement that Cicero'sfirst Catilinarian, or Cicero himself, is boring.I4

P. CRAIG
CHRISTOPHER
University of Tennessee

l4 Earlier forms of this paper were delivered at the annual meeting of ACTFL in
1990and at the American Classical League panel at the APA annual meeting in 1991. I
must thank Alice Sanford and Harry Rutledge for those invitations, and my fellow
Ciceronian JamesMay for the interest that brought this article into print. Above all, I
must thank my anonymous co-authors, the students in my third-year Latin course.