Lucius Sergius Cătĭlīna

, a celebrated Roman, descended of a noble family. When he had squandered away his fortune by his debaucheries and extravagance, and been refused the consulship, he secretly meditated the ruin of his country, and conspired with many of the most illustrious of the Romans, as di olute as himself, to extirpate the senate, plunder the treasury, and set Rome on fire. This conspiracy was timely discovered by the consul Cicero, whom he had resolved to murder; and Cat i line, after he had declared his intentions in the full senate, and attempted to vindicate himself, on seeing five of his accomplices arrested, retired to Gaul, where his partisans were a embling an army; while Cicero at Rome punished the condemned conspirators. Petreius, the other consul’s lieutenant, attacked Cat i line’s ill-disciplined troops, and routed them. Cat i line was killed in the engagement, bravely fighting, about the middle of December, B.C. 63. His character has been deservedly branded with the foulest infamy; and to the violence he offered to a vestal, he added the more atrocious murder of his own brother, for which he would have suffered death, had not friends and bribes prevailed over justice. It has been reported that Cat i line and the other conspirators drank human blood, to make their oaths more firm and inviolable. Sallust has written an account of the conspiracy. Cicero , Against Cat i line .— Virgil , Æneid , bk. 8 , li. 668 .