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.

'The Catiline Conspiracy' is a history book published by the Roman historian Sallust. The second historical monograph in Latin literature, it chronicles the attempted overthrow of the government by the aristocrat Catiline in 63 BC in what has been usually called the Catilinarian conspiracy. The narrative of the monograph was seized upon as illustrating the moral and social decadence of the ruling Roman classes, particularly the Roman Senate. Sallust continually critiques Roman corruption throughout his narration.

In this book, Charles Odahl offers a vivid narrative and analysis of the clashes of Cicero and Catiline during the Roman Revolution, and illuminates the political, military, economic and social problems which lead to the demise of the republican system and the rise of the imperial regime of the Caesars.

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.

These three works exemplify the Roman historian Sallust's condemnation of the excesses of the late Republic. In the conspiracy of Catiline and the war against Jugurtha he sees moral and political corruption and the tragedy of civil strife. This new translation captures Sallust's distinctive style and considers his work as history and literature.