Forging Catiline: Portraits of the Arch-conspirator in Medieval and Early Modern Pseudepigrapha

Medieval and early modern ‘Ciceronian’ pseudepigrapha portray a two-faced Catiline, as both a rebel and model of vice and the embodiment of a modern notion of politics, based on the display of rhetorical talents and a harmonic fusion of aristocratic virtues and political abilities. This paper concentrates on the literary, historical and political background lying behind forgeries of the arch-conspirator Catiline from XII-XIII centuries to the Italian Renaissance and draws attention to the exploitation – and manipulation – of Cicero’s and Sallust’s historical accounts of the Catilinarian conspiracy in pseudepigraphic texts. It shows how talented forgers contributed to the vitality of classical canonical works in the early modern culture and refashioned the personage of the nobilis Catiline in order to convey a new political message.