Classics and Latin Studies

Workshop Title: 

009 Rebel with a Cause – Catiline, the Roman Revolution, and the Multivalence of History

​

Prerequisites

Students should be able to read Latin. Complete a Latin Assessment. High school students are interested in the areas of history, Classics, Greek studies, Roman studies, Latin studies, literature, Rhetoric, etc.

​

Workshop Description

Lucius Sergius Catilina “Catiline” was a high-born Roman politician. Successful early in his career, he repeatedly failed in his bid for Rome’s highest office, the consulship. He has hatched up a conspiracy, which led to his incrimination. Who was he? Our primary sources are the speeches and letters by the orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero and the historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus. Both shared bias but differed in kind; both knew how to construct a persona that fit their prospective narratives. Throughout this workshop, we will find out who this man was. Also, we may reconstruct what he was made to be.

​

Sample Research Topics

• Cicero’s Catiline outside of the Catilinarian Orations: a portrait.  

• Topics of invective across the four Catilinarian Orations.

• Cicero’s Catiline in the Sallust’s  Catilinarian Conspiracy.

• Catiline and the elusiveness of the past.

• Sallust’s Rome in the Bellum Catilinae: A “Makros Anthropos”

• How location adds to Cicero’s rhetoric in the Catilinarians

•  Catiline’s sister? Sempronia is in Sallust