It suited Cicero to do the same.

If I were detected in a plot for blowing up a Cabinet Council, I do not doubt but that I should get the late attorney-general to defend me.[187] But Catiline, though he was acquitted, was balked in his candidature for the Consulship of the next year, B.C.65.

P.Sulla and Autronius were elected--that Sulla to whose subsequent defence I have just referred in this note--but were ejected on the score of bribery, and two others, Torquatus and Cotta, were elected in their place.

In this way three men standing on high before their countrymen--one having been debarred from standing for the Consulship, and the other two having been robbed of their prize even when it was within their grasp--not unnaturally became traitors at heart.

Almost as naturally they came together and conspired.
Why should they have been selected as victims, having only done that which every aristocrat did as a matter of course in following out his recognized profession in living upon the subject nations?
Their conduct had probably been the same as that of others, or if more glaring, only so much so as is always the case with vices as they become more common.
However, the three men fell, and became the centre of a plot which is known as the first Catiline conspiracy.
The reader must bear in mind that I am now telling the story of Catiline, and going back to a period of two years before Cicero's Consulship, which was B.C.63.