This year, in its annual Supreme Court moot trial of a famous ancient figure, the charity Classics for All charged the consul Cicero with illegally ordering the execution of five traitors working with the failed politician Catiline to bring revolution to Rome (63 bc). In his history of that crisis, Sallust composed speeches for Julius Caesar in defence of the conspirators, and for Cato the Younger for their execution, followed by a character assessment. This package may prompt reflections on our times.

Caesar argued that men facing difficult questions ‘should clear their minds of hatred, amity, anger and compassion… success is achieved by applying judgment; but your passions will rule you, if you let them, and your judgment will go out of the window’. If the man in the street was furious, so what? But those in power were constrained by the fact that they had to make the decisions; if that meant the death penalty without trial, however popular, a dangerous precedent would be set.

Cato argued that, with Catiline’s army ready to strike, this was a moment of crisis. The senate should forget the past and take precautions against what these men were about to do now, since ‘with a crime of this sort, unless you take measures to prevent it being committed, it is too late: appealing to the law achieves nothing, because once the city has been captured, the victims are left with nothing’. It was ‘liberty and lives’ that were at stake, and the real question was whether Rome belonged to Romans or to public enemies planning massacre and arson.

Sallust then evaluated these two ‘brilliant but very different’ men: Caesar, known for his giving, helping and forgiving, hard work and desire for great power and war ‘where his brilliance could shine’, Cato for his upright life, firmness, restraint, propriety and most of all austerity, ‘preferring to be a good man than to seem one, and so the less he sought fame, all the more it pursued him’.

Does any of this represent a world we recognise?