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.

D. H. Berry is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. He has published an edition of Cicero's Pro P. Sulla Oratio (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries, 1996) and two volumes in Oxford World's Classics, Cicero: Defence Speeches (2000) and Cicero: Political Speeches (2006).

Editors' Foreword
Preface
Figures
Preliminary Note
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Patrician and the New Man
Chapter 2: What are the Catilinarians?
Chapter 3: Denouncing the Living / Dead Catiline: The First Catilinarian
Chapter 4: Persuading the People: The Second and Third Catilinarians
Chapter 5: Pro Cicerone: The Fourth Catilinarian
Chapter 6: Catiline in the Underworld and Afterwards
APPENDIX 1: A Catilinarian Chronology, 108-57 BC
APPENDIX 2: Catiline's Surviving Words
APPENDIX 3: Two Bowls Inscribed with the Names of Catiline and Cato
Maps
Bibliography
Index