First Catilinarian conspiracy

Catiline supposedly became involved when his consular candidacy was rejected by the presiding magistrate for the comitia in 66 BC, Lucius Volcatius Tullus.

[10] The summary thereof states only that a conspiracy, by those who had stood for the consulship but were convicted of ambitus (Autronius and Sulla), to kill the consuls was suppressed.

When Catiline was tried for corruption later in 65 BC, one of the sitting consuls he was alleged to have planned to murder, Lucius Manlius Torquatus, appeared in his defence and indicated his disbelief of the rumours.

[17][10][18][19][20] Older scholarship had varied views, positing various theories: The conspirators could have been agents of a shadowy anti-Pompeian faction or a motley group of opportunists.

[22] Robin Seager in a 1964 article proposes means by which the legend was developed:[23] Cicero sought to discredit Catiline prior to his consulship by associating him to a supposed plot that came to nothing; he later excised Publius Sulla from his descriptions when he needed to defend him.

[24] Of the possibility of a core conspiracy by the two consuls-designate unseated for corruption, Seager writes "it is inconceivable that there was such a plot... they could have had no hope of recovering the consulship even for a single day".

[26] Erich S. Gruen in a 1969 article similarly dismisses the ancient descriptions as "hopelessly muddled by propaganda and invective", explaining that after the actual Catilinarian conspiracy in 63 BC, "it was in any politician's interest to associate his enemies with Catiline" and that later stories embellished this by inventing a role for Caesar and Crassus after Caesar's polarising consulship in 59 BC.