Ah they and welcome to Emperor's of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is

Rianna Evans an associate professor in classics and ancient history from

Latrobe University. This is episode CCXI and part two of the Catalan conspiracy.

I'm calling this one an entire Farago.

You see, the problem with conspiring against the Roman state and starting a civil war is that everyone assumes that you were involved in every underhanded activity found out by the Senate.

This is what happened with Catalan.

There was an earlier conspiracy, before THE conspiracy,

and in this episode we looked at the role he played in it,

or didn't play in it, or did he?

Here's Rianna Evans.

So what we're dealing with in this episode is something that might not have happened.

It's the possibly fictitious first Catalinian conspiracy, because the famous one, some people call the second conspiracy.

All right, so the famous one is when Cicero was consul in 63 B.C.

but possibly the kind of years leading up to that, 65 and 64, there was another

conspiracy, a first conspiracy that he may have been involved in.

And is it that the events of this first, supposed possible conspiracy get conflated with the

second conspiracy and the accounts maybe just aren't as exact as to their timing and get the order of things mixed up and...

Well, it's quite possible that because basically got an army together in 63 and there was a supposed

attempt to kill Cicero and oust him, which I won't give it all the way

before we get there that that was then kind of retrojected back onto some conflict in the years

65 and 64 and that Catalan's name was wound up in it.

...