Forgotten, Like the Beasts of the Field: The Catiline Conspiracy, Part II

Disclaimer: Originally written as a submission to the 2026 ACX book review contest. I decided to post it on my personal Substack, but it was too long for one post, so I split it up and edited it a bit. The translations of Bellum Catilinae are mine, and I am an amateur Latinist at best. There may be some errors.Hans W. Schmidt, Cicero's Oration against CatilineIn the first part of this essay, we reviewed the author of the Bellum Catilinae, Caius Sallustius Crispus, and the first half of his magnum opus, about 10% of which I copy-pasted into my article. We looked at his life and voice, and in particular, we examined the first speech that his monstrous villain Catiline gives to his followers. I posited that Sallust’s suspicious even-handedness in his treatment of Catiline—whom he accuses of murdering his son, raping the Vestal virgins, pretty much every heinous crime a Roman can think of—is half because he’d be embarrassed to write a bad speech, and half because he basically agrees with…