Now you have me thinking more about the Catiline fiasco. Cicero has been my favorite politician of the ancient world. But I think he mishandled the Catiline conspiracy. After the conspirators were arrested, he had them executed without trials. That caused a huge controversy and the debate continued for decades.

Cicero was a lawyer and he made a fancy legal argument that, as consul, he had authority to execute without trials during an emergency. When the conspirators were arrested, people were afraid that there could be more conspirators, or that the arrested conspirators would be rescued by a mob that would succeed with the coup. But Romans regarded each citizen's right to a trial as fundamental, and the executions caused a lot of blowback.

I think Cicero weakened the Roman constitution with those executions. That added to the slippery slope of the Roman republic.

If we think about it, suspending a constitutional right during an emergency set a dangerous precedent. Now we have prisoners in Guantanamo held indefinitely without trial. Now the US government executes its citizens without trial by blowing them up with drones. Do you see what Cicero started?

Cicero really screwed up another situation years later. Caesar and Pompey invited him to join them in a triumvirate to govern Rome. Cicero declined. If he had accepted, he was the perfect guy to mediate the conflicts between Caesar and Pompey. That's why they wanted him. If he had joined the triumvirate, Cicero could have prevented the civil war, and maybe helped to reform the republic, at least for another while.

So I'm mad at Cicero. But he spent his life trying to preserve the republic.