In Catilinam (The Catilinarian Orations)
In Catilinam
A conspiracy to overthrow the republic by force justifies extraordinary action by a consul, even action that skirts due process, because the survival of the state outweighs the rights of a man plotting to destroy it.
- emergency powers against an internal threat to the state
- oratory as political self-promotion and historical record
- due process weighed against state survival
- model text for Latin invective
Four speeches Cicero delivered as consul in 63 BC denouncing Catiline's conspiracy to seize power through insurrection and assassination, beginning with the famous first oration delivered to Catiline's face in the Senate ('Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?'). The speeches trace the conspiracy's exposure, Catiline's flight from Rome, and the Senate's controversial decision to execute the captured conspirators without trial, a decision Cicero defended as necessary self-preservation and that later cost him political enemies who called it murder. Delivered and published as a record of his consulship, the orations became the standard schoolroom model of Latin invective and of a magistrate claiming emergency powers against an internal enemy.
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