CATHOLICS 



CATMINT 



15 



4'alliolirs. OLD. See OLD CATHOLICS. 



Catholikos is the title of the head of the 

 Church. See ARMENIA. 



4'atili na. Lucius SEROIUS, the Roman con- 

 -pii.it. ir, wius lK)rn about the year 108 B.C. of an 

 aii'-i<'nt patrician but impoverished family. His 



S. u tli was stained with profligacy and* crime. 

 e attached himself to the party of Sulla, and 

 revelled in the bloodshed and confusion that dis- 

 graced it triumph. His Ixxly was capable of 

 .in luring any labour or fatigue, and his mind was 

 nia-tturful, resolute, and remorseless. Despite his 

 infamies he was elected proetor in the year 68 B.C., 

 ami nr\t. year governor of Africa, but was dis- 

 qualified as a candidate for the consulship in 66 by 

 rliarges of maladministration in his province. Dis- 

 appomted thus in hrs ambition, and burdened with 

 debts, he saw no hope for himself but in the 

 chances of a political revolution, and therefore 

 entered into a conspiracy, including many other 

 young Roman nobles, in morals and circumstances 

 like himself. The plot, however, was revealed to 

 Cicero by Fulvia, mistress of one of the con- 

 spirators. Operations were to commence with the 

 assassination of Cicero in the Campus Martius, but 

 the latter was kept aware of every step of the 

 conspiracy, and contrived to frustrate the whole 

 design. In the night of November 6 (63 B.C.), 

 Catiline assembled his confederates, and explained 

 to them a new plan for assassinating Cicero ; for 

 bringing up the Tuscan army (which he had 

 seduced from its allegiance), under Manlius, from 

 the encampment at xtafoln ; for setting fire to 

 Rome, and putting to death the hostile senators 

 and citizens. In the course of a few hours, every- 

 thing was made known to Cicero. Accordingly, 

 when the chosen assassins came to the house of the 

 consul, on pretence of a visit, they were immedi- 

 ately repulsed. Two days later, Catiline with his 

 usual reckless audacity, appeared in the senate, 

 when Cicero who had received intelligence that 

 the insurrection had already broken out in Etruria 

 commenced the celebrated invective beginning : 

 Quousqite tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia 

 nostra ? ( ' How long now, Catiline, will you abuse 

 our patience ? ' ) The conspirator was confounded, 

 not by the keenness of Cicero's attack, but by the 

 minute knowledge he displayed of the plot. His 

 attempt at a reply was miserable, and was drowned 

 in cries of execration. With curses on his lips, he 

 rushed out of the senate, and escaped from Rome 

 during the night. Catiline and Manlius were now 

 denounced as traitors, and an army under the 

 consul Antonius was sent against them. The 

 conspirators who remained in Rome, of whom the 

 chief were Lentulus and Cethegus, were at once 

 arrested. After a great debate in the senate 

 (December 5), in which Ca-sar and Cato took a 

 leading part on opposite sides, the conspirators 

 were condemned to death. The sentence was 

 executed that night in prison. The insurrections in 

 several parts of Italy were meanwhile suppressed ; 

 many who had resorted to Catiline's camp in 

 Etruria deserted when they heard what had taken 

 place in Rome, and his intention to proceed into 

 Gaul was frustrated. In the beginning of January 

 he returned by Pistoria (now Pistoja) into Etruria, 

 where he encountered the forces under Antonius, 

 and after a desperate battle in which he fought 

 with more than the courage of despair, he was 

 defeated and slain. Catiline's appearance was in 

 perfect keeping with his character. His face was 

 reckless and defiant in expression, and haggard 

 with a sense of crime ; his eyes were wild and 

 bloodshot; his gait restless and unsteady from 

 nightly debauchery and the constant fever of in- 

 satiable and disappointed ambition. The Bellum 



Catilinii riu nt <>f Sail list is a masterpiece. For the 

 view that Catiliria was a misrepresented democrat, 

 see Beesly's Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberiut (1878). 



Cat Island. See BAHAMAS. 



Catkin (amentum). Although the vegetative 

 growth of all inflorescences tends to be more or leas 

 shortened and compressed in consequence of tli<-ir 

 reproductive purpose, we have this peculiarly mani- 

 fested in the catkin, which is a crowded niiikc or 

 tuft of small unisexual flowers with reduced scale- 

 like bracts. Examples are found in the willow, 

 hazel, oak, birch, alder, &c. (q.v. ). In some, 

 as in the hazel and oak, the male flowers only are 



1, Shoot of Birch in spring, bearing large terminal Male 

 (6) and Female (a) Catkins. 2, Shoot of Birch in 

 autumn with ripe Female Catkin. 3, Female Catkin 

 of Willow. 



in catkins, the female catkin of the flower being 

 reduced to a few brown scales, while the female 

 flowers of the oak are solitary, each on its own 

 branchlet. Male catkins fall off after shedding 

 their pollen, and even during life are frequently 

 weak and pendulous, like the stamens of grasses, 

 but these consequences of extremely reduced vege- 

 tative life become no doubt also of advantage at 

 first in developing, and later in scattering, the 

 pollen. 



ratlin. GEORGE, one of the first authorities on 

 the habits of the North American Indians, was 

 born in Pennsylvania in 1796. He was bred to the 

 law, but soon turned to drawing and painting, 

 which he had taught himself. In 1832 he went to 

 the Far West to study the native Indians, and spent 

 the next eight years among them, everywhere 

 painting portraits of individuals (not less than 47<> 

 full length) and pictures illustrative of life and 

 manners, which are now in the National Museum 

 at Washington. Catlin next travelled ( IS.YJ 

 in South and Central America, and lived in Europe 

 until 1871. At London in 1841 he published his 

 learned and amply illustrated Manners, Customs, 

 and Condition of the North American Indians, and 

 in 1844 The North American Portfolio. He died at 

 Jersey City, December 23, 1872. Other books are 

 Notes of Eight Years in Europe ( 1848) ; The Breath 

 of Life, or Mai- Respiration ( 1861 ), on the benefit of 

 keeping one's mouth always closed. 



Catmint, or CATNEP (Neo'eta Cataria), a 

 labiate herb, very common in North America, of 

 which the peculiar fragrance is very attractive to 

 cats, much in the same way as valerian. 



