Trump, Catiline, Cato and Cicero
March 22, 2025
by William P. Meyers

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Catiline Conspiracy and January 6 Revolt

One gets the sense that Donald Trump, while a school boy, never read even such short books as A Red Pony, The Old Man and the Sea, or The Red Badge of Courage. Possibly he read the Cliff Notes. I believe he can read, judging by his vocabulary at about a sixth-grade level, though he likely achieved a bit more in high school. He almost certainly did not read Cato or Cicero, two Roman Republic era authors beloved to many of our founding fathers. He may not even recognize the historical event usually called the Catiline Conspiracy. However, many of his right-wing crew profess to be well-versed in Cato and Cicero, and hence able to analyse why Trump's first conspiracy to overthrow the government, our Republic, failed in 2021. America students rarely are taught about Cato, Cicero, and Catiline in our modern era, so allow me to catch everyone up to speed before proceeding with my analysis of how this applies to the current situation.

Thomas E. Ricks' book First Principles give an excellent short summary (on page 20):

"Cato's first great political confrontation came in 63 BC when Cicero, who had been elected consul the previous year, exposed the conspiracy of Catiline, a populist patrician who had stood for consul three times, only to be rejected each time. After the third such rebuff, Catiline and his follower apparently planned a violent takeover of the city [Rome]. Cicero responded by calling for their execution. He was opposed in this by Julius Caesar . . . [who] argued that the conspirators instead should simply be exiled. Cato denounced Caesar as pleading for false mercy that endangered the state. For the next two decades, the men would be relentless enemies as Cato struggled to preserve the Republic against Caesar's dictatorial ambitions."

There is no precise correspondence between Catiline's attempt to takeover the Roman Republic and the events in the U.S. leading up to the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress that can fairly be called an insurrection aimed at keeping Donald Trump as President after he lost the 2020 election. Someone clever from the Trump camp could tell him to say that Biden is the new Catiline. In either case the fair question is: if someone tries to establish a dictatorship, what should those who value a republic inflict as punishment, presuming the usurper is stopped?

In the case of Catiline, it was Cato's argument that death was the appropriate penalty that won out. Catiline's major co-conspirators were put to death. Catiline had an army, but many of his soldiers deserted him. The army of the Roman Republic defeated the rebels, and Catiline died in the battle. Problem solved.

Of course history is as filled with sad endings as happy ones. About 20 years later Julius Caesar grabbed power. True, he was later stabbed to death by some republican minded senators. But the precedent was set. The republic would give way to the Empire.

Our Founding Fathers knew all of this. Many of them could read Latin. Most of them (certainly John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) had extensive libraries featuring Cicero and Cato among their prized books. George Washington had less formal education, but he had strongly adopted the Roman idea of virtue, meaning public service, and so helped establish that the President of the United States was subject to Congress, the Courts, and public service.

President Trump feels he was persecuted by the Biden administration and those members who impeached him or investigated his crimes related to January 6. I believe the opposite. I believe our republic may end because too few of its members understood what needed to be done to preserve it. The Trump Rebellion should have been prosecuted more vigorously. Like Jefferson Davis and the rebels of the Civil War, Trump should have been forbidden to run for office. More than that: the nation would have been safer had Trump been executed. True, that would also have set a dangerous precedent.

The corruption of Roman society during the last decades of the Republic was largely a secondary effect of Rome's military success. The more other nations were brought under the Roman umbrella, the more money poured into Rome and Italy, and the less men were interested in virtue. We have seen a similar phenomena in these still United States. Our economic growth accelerated after World War II largely because our competitors factories had been (mostly) bombed. An oligarchy has grown up, first built mainly on post-war manufacturing and more lately on the digital revolution.

Our democracy, our republic, is clearly in danger. Even if Trump does not go all the way to dictatorship, someone else will try. We are not ancient Rome. We are capable of maintaining our democracy, but only if enough of us are willing to resist any attempt (right or left, religious or secular) to set up a dictatorship.