In his own age Cicero and Sallust, who were opposed in all their political views, combined to speak ill of him.

In the next, Virgil makes him as suffering his punishment in hell.[179] In the next, Velleius Paterculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom Cicero had banished.[180] Juvenal makes various allusions to him, but all in the same spirit.

Juvenal cared nothing for history, but used the names of well-known persons as illustrations of the idea which he was presenting.[181] Valerius Maximus, who wrote commendable little essays about all the virtues and all the vices, which he illustrated with the names of all the vicious and all the virtuous people he knew, is very severe on Catiline.[182] Florus, who wrote two centuries and a half after the conspiracy, gives us of Catiline the same personal story as that told both by Sallust and Cicero: "Debauchery, in the first place; and then the poverty which that had produced; and then the opportunity of the time, because the Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline to conspire for the destruction of his country."[183] Mommsen, who was certainly biassed by no feeling in favor of Cicero, declares that Catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age.

His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history."[184] All this is no evidence.

Cicero and Sallust may possibly have combined to lie about Catiline.