While the course of the events themselves thus testifies that the threads of the Catilinarian plot reached far higher than Lentulus and Catilina, it deserves also to be noticed, that at a much later period, when Caesar had got to the head of the state, he was in the closest alliance with the only Catilinarian still surviving, Publius Sittius the leader of the Mauretanian free bands, and that he modified the law of debt quite in the sense that the proclamations of Manlius demanded.
All these pieces of evidence speak clearly enough; but, even were it not so, the desperate position of the democracy in presence of the military power--which since the Gabinio-Manilian laws assumed by its side an attitude more threatening than ever--renders it almost a certainty that, as usually happens in such cases, it sought a last resource in secret plots and in alliance with anarchy.

The circumstances were very similar to those of the Cinnan times.

While in the east Pompeius occupied a position nearly such as Sulla then did, Crassus and Caesar sought to raise over against him a power in Italy like that which Marius and Cinna had possessed, with the view of employing it if possible better than they had done.

The way to this result lay once more through terrorism and anarchy, and to pave that way Catilina was certainly the fitting man.

Naturally the more reputable leaders of the democracy kept themselves as far as possible in the background, and left to their unclean associates the execution of the unclean work, the political results of which they hoped afterwards to appropriate.