O Tempora! O Mores!

In 63 B.C., Lucius Sergius Catilina, a Roman aristocrat, formed a conspiracy to overthrow the Roman Republic. Cicero, who was consul that year, exposed the plot and documented his defeat of the conspiracy in his Orations Against Catiline. The First Catilinarian Oration is well known and deservedly famous. Scholars are familiar with the other three speeches, but few students know them. This lapse is regrettable. The Third Oration is a fast-paced courtroom drama, and the Second and Fourth Orations provide critical information about a key event in Roman history. Susan Shapiro here makes all Cicero's Catilinarian Orations accessible to the intermediate Latin student.

Susan O. Shapiro is Assistant Professor of History and Classics at Utah State University