It was a summer of glorious triumph for the mighty Roman Republic. Her invincible legions had brought all foreign enemies to their knees. But in Rome there was no peace. The streets were flooded with the blood of murdered citizens, and there were rumors of more atrocities to come. Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger was convinced a conspiracy existed to overthrow the government-a sinister cabal that could only be destroyed from within. But admission into the traitorous society of evil carried a grim price: the life of Decius's closest friend...and maybe his own.

In 62 BC, Roman Senator Lucius Sergius Catiline lay dead on a battlefield in Tuscany. He was slain along with his soldiers after his conspiracy to overthrow the Roman Republic had been exposed by his adversary Cicero. It was an ignominious end for a man described at the time as a perverted, insane monster who had attempted to return his family to fortune and social standing.

Like Guy Fawkes in early 17th-century Britain, L. Sergius Catilina was a threat to the constitution imposed on Rome by Sulla in the mid-1st century BC. His aim at first was to reach the consulship, the summit of power at Rome, by conventional means, but he lacked the money and support to win his way to the top, unlike two contemporaries of greater means and talent: the orator Cicero and the military man Pompey the Great. Defeated for the third time, Catiline took to revolution with a substantial following: destitute farmers, impoverished landowners, discontented Italians and debtors of all kinds. But they could not stand up to the forces of law and order and the rebellion was quashed. For the controversy that still surrounds it, the personalities involved, the distinction of the writers such as Cicero and Sallust, who are our main sources of information for it, this episode remains one of the most significant in late Republican history. This volume gives an energetic and appealing overview of the events, their sources, and the arguments of modern historians looking back at this controversial period. Accessible for students, but useful also for more experienced scholars, this is the perfect introduction not only to a specific historical episode, but also to the problems of tackling ancient sources as evidence.

The only surviving works from one of the world's earliest historians, in important new translations Sallust's first published work, Catiline's War, contains the memorable history of the year 63, including his thoughts on Catiline, a Roman politician who made an ill-fated attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic. In The Jugurthine War, Sallust dwells upon the feebleness of the Senate and aristocracy, having collected materials and compiled notes for this work during his governorship of Numidia.

"The Greek and Roman classics belong to everyone. Brandon Winningham has amply demonstrated that with his stirring novel about Catiline and Cicero." Dr. Susan Wiltshire Professor of Classics Vanderbilt University It is now August, 70 BC, and for the past twelve years Catiline has hidden his atrocities from the public and enjoyed his marriage built on lust and murder, all the while deciding on what his next accomplishment should be. His political career had taken a near-devastating blow when three years before he had found himself before a jury of Roman knights for allegedly having sexual relations with a Vestal Virgin, something forbidden by Roman law and thought to bring consequences from the gods. Once again, his connections with the dregs of Rome and carefully placed bribes had earned him an acquittal, and the virgin, Fabia, had been buried alive for her promiscuity. Lucius Catiline had walked the streets of Rome, freely consorting with prostitutes and the drunken crowd. Murder and deceit have not quenched his appetite, but politics and power definitely could.

'the glory of wealth and physical beauty is fluid and fragile; but virtue is held brilliant and eternal' The Roman historian Sallust lived through troubled times. He deplored the moral and political decline of the Republic, and in his two monographs he set out to exemplify the reasons for the years of civil strife. Catiline's Conspiracy is an account of the rebellion against the state led by the disaffected Catiline. For Sallust it was 'especially memorable because of the unprecedented nature of the crime and the danger it caused'. Rome's fight against the king of Numidia in The Jugurthine War is a graphic depiction of power struggles in Rome and brutal battles in Africa that eventually resulted in the capture of Jugurtha. Sallust's abrupt and distinctive style is the perfect vehicle for his moral urgency, bitter condemnation, and satirical cynicism. This new translation, which also includes Sallust's fragmentary Histories, captures his effects in an accessible English idiom, and provides a comprehensive introduction to his work as history and literature. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Catilinarians are a set of four speeches that Cicero, while consul in 63 BC, delivered before the senate and the Roman people against the conspirator Catiline and his followers. Or are they? Cicero did not publish the speeches until three years later, and he substantially revised them before publication, rewriting some passages and adding others, all with the aim of justifying the action he had taken against the conspirators and memorializing his own role in the suppression of the conspiracy. How, then, should we interpret these speeches as literature? Can we treat them as representing what Cicero actually said? Or do we have to read them merely as political pamphlets from a later time? In this, the first book-length discussion of these famous speeches, D. H. Berry clarifies what the speeches actually are and explains how he believes we should approach them. In addition, the book contains a full and up-to-date account of the Catilinarian conspiracy and a survey of the influence that the story of Catiline has had on writers such as Sallust and Virgil, Ben Jonson and Henrik Ibsen, from antiquity to the present day.