I'm John Bachelor with Professor Josiah Osgoat, a classicist, and I enjoy the fact that

classicist stories are everything you want in a Hollywood thriller plus. It happened. It's the

nature of history. You can't make it up. I spent many years as a novelist.

When you're writing fiction, you have to be believable. When you're writing history, you don't have to.

It's a freedom. So we're about to enter into the biggest mistake I think Cicero ever made.

There are men who are left in Rome who were in league with Cataline,

who promised to bring in allies if Catalina marches on Rome and takes over.

They were planning to be reformer dictators.

Five of the men were arrested by Cicero. And professor, help me understand why Cicero makes this mistake, because he's so

careful to this point. What is the mistake and why do we think he makes it? Yeah, well, as you say,

Cicero felt vindicated by this point because he'd been warning about

Catalang a long time. And Cicero was actually right. You know, Caterline went off and joined this

military upright, rising. And there have been a lot of doubts, Cicero the new man, can you trust him?

You know, his enemies whispered things.

So he feels confident now.

And it's exactly like a Greek tragedy, right?

He has many good qualities, but he becomes overwhelmed by his own sense of invincibility in this moment. his feeling that, you know, he's had such a

run of good luck now. He has to play his hand to the end. So what happens is there are these

friends of Catiline high ranking, including senators, left behind in Rome, and they're supposed to prepare the way for

what Cicero says would be a coup d'etat. So the stakes are high. And Cicero actually wants these

collaborators of Catteline to be executed as traitors,itors to the Republic. And there is a bit of

justification for this. Public enemies, as they were called, of Rome, they were supposed to be

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