Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
from Lucius Sergius Catilina, Roman official who plotted an uprising 63 B.C.E. and was exposed by Cicero in a famous oration, taken since 1590s as a type of a reckless conspirator.
Wikipedia
Lucius Sergius Catilina, known in English as Catiline (; 108–62 BC), was a Roman Senator of the 1st century BC best known for the second Catilinarian conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic and, in particular, the power of the aristocratic Senate. He is also known for several acquittals in court, including one for the charge of adultery with a Vestal Virgin.
Catiline or Catilina was Henrik Ibsen's first play. It was written during winter 1848–49 and first performed under Ibsen's name on 3 December 1881 at the Nya Teatern (New Theater), Stockholm, Sweden. The first Norwegian performance under Ibsen's name was at Det Nye Teater in Oslo on 24 August 1935.
Forced to support himself after his father declared bankruptcy, Ibsen went to Grimstad as a pharmacist's apprentice. There he both prepared himself for university and experimented with various forms of poetry. While studying, he found himself passionately drawn into the Catiline orations, famous speeches by Cicero against the elected questor Catiline and his conspiracy to overthrow the republic. Ibsen chose this conspirator as the subject for his initial effort, finishing Catiline in 1849. Ibsen expresses in the prologue to the second edition (1875) that he was profoundly inspired by the contemporary political situation of Europe, and that he favored the Magyar uprising against the Hapsburg empire. He explains that the case of Catiline had special interest for him, because "there are given few examples of historical persons, whose memory has been more entirely in the possession of its conquerors, than Catiline". Thus, Catiline can be read as one of Ibsen's troubled (and troubling) heroes, alongside Brand and Gregers Werle.
The play appeared in Christiania the following spring under Ibsen's early pseudonym, Brynjolf Bjarme.
The main character in this historical drama is the noble Roman Lucius Catilina, based on the historical figure of Catiline. He is torn between two women, his wife Aurelia and the Vestal virgin Furia. As characteristic of Ibsen's early work, the play is in blank verse.
Although Catiline may not be among Ibsen's best plays, it foreshadows many of the themes found in his later works. Catilina, full of doubts and torn between love and duty, is similar to protagonists in John Gabriel Borkman and The Master Builder.
Furia is also the prototype of some of the later female characters, such as Hedda Gabler.
Ibsen was not the first playwright to dramatize the story of Catiline. Ben Jonson wrote a tragedy on the subject, called Catiline, His Conspiracy, in 1611.
Catiline or Catilina ( Latin) may refer to:
-
Catiline, Lucius Sergius Catilina (108 BC–62 BC), Roman politician and author of a conspiracy to overthrow the Roman Republic
- Catiline Orations (63 BC) of Cicero, exposing the Catilinarian conspiracy to the Roman Senate
- The Conspiracy of Catiline, one of Sallust's two major surviving works
- Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), a tragedy by Ben Jonson
- Catilina (1792), opera by Antonio Salieri with libretto by Giovanni Battista Casti
- Catiline (play) (1850), Henrik Ibsen's first play
- Catilina Aubameyang (b. 1983), Gabonese soccer player
Usage examples of "catiline".
Working philanthropy is a practical specialty, requiring not a mere impulse, but a talent, with its peculiar sagacity for finding its objects, a tact for selecting its agencies, an organizing and art ranging faculty, a steady set of nerves, and a constitution such as Sallust describes in Catiline, patient of cold, of hunger, and of watching.
For how did the conspiracy of Catiline, even in so large and corrupt a city, find so abundant a supply of men whose hands and tongues found them a living by perjury and civic broils?
The morning-song being over, Catasauqua told Catiline and Cattaraugus to fetch their little books, and she would teach them how to spell.
After lesson, Catasauqua gave Catiline and Cattaraugus some rushes, so that they could earn a little circus-money by building cat's cradles, and at the same time amuse themselves and not miss her.
The Catiline conspiracy was as important in its day as the Gunpowder Plot in England.
Among these are found persons, in comparison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous and Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation.