>Hey, this is gonna sound crazy, but would you believe that I just found a bundle of letters handwritten and signed by each of the people I want to execute confessing their crimes? I'm doing this to save the Republic from tyranny btw
Cicero was a hoe, a talented sycophantic propagandist for the optimate oligarchs
>>18512196Populares were literally destroying the republic by using rabble for cheap powergrabs.
>>18512492>when the general threatens to invade the city unless he gets his triumph: :)>when the general threatens to invade the city unless he gets his triumph and also promises free bread: >:(
>>18512507if a 100 good-for-nothings move to Rome and you give them free bread, next month 200 will come. I fully support land reforms and giving land to veterans, but free bread folks are dead weight at best, fuck them
>>18512192What should he have done instead? I understand the criticism, but I also understand why he did what he did. The republic was in a bad way at the time; you had Caesar, Crassus, Claudius, Milo, and Pompey circling around, each wanting to be king. Cicero had to put down Cateline fast and hard so they couldn’t use the chaos to their andvantage and also to make an example. Didn’t work out, but understandable.
Most annoying person in history, everyone who met him agrees
>>18513035>What should he have done instead?I would simply use my amazing powers of rhetoric to win Caesar over to my side
It was literally legal for him to just hang Cataline without any kind of due process. The senatus consultum ultimum gave him absolute authority. There is no reason to believe he fabricated any evidence because he didn’t need any evidence.
He didn't "find a bundle of letters", he schemed with the Allobroges to get the conspirators to write incriminating letters, then arranged an ambush to confiscate the letters. This is corroborated by Sallust. Also, all the conspirators confessed to the entire Senate. Given how many people were involved, it's absurd to suggest Cicero would have published In Catilinam III (which explains all of this) if he had fabricated any part of this story.
>>18512192>I'm doing this to save the Republic from tyranny btwI love that these retards used this justification when the “””republic””” was inherently tyrannical, unjust, and deeply classist.
>>18512192i never really cared for rome nor roman history, but can someone explain to me simply what happened?Please remember to use allegories to modern politics, video games and pop-culture, thanks.
>>18513035>What should he have done insteadCatiline and his co-conspirators latched onto a wave of popular resentment to try to grab power illegally and settle personal grudges. That deep resentment he tapped into existed because Rome had become such a ruthless plutocracy where the haves had an ever increasing share of the pie. If Catiline had come to power, slaughtered half the senators, stolen their wealth and given some of it to his supporters he might have been remembered as a roman robin hood imstead of the power mad vindictive thug that he undoubtedly was. Cicero had no interest in doing anythimg to solve this underlying problem of extreme inequality destroying the republic.Nor did he care to fix the extreme amount of money required to win elections which required politicians to go into deep debt to get elected. This had the dual problems of necessitating official corruption by those who won elections, to recover those losses, and completely ruining electoral losers like Catiline, who would then attempt extralegal remedies.
>>18514551According to polybius it had all the benefits of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, with none of the faults.
