Chapter 2 considers how Cicero responded to the model of the body politic proposed by Catiline. Rejecting the head of state metaphor, his oratory describes a civic healer capable of diagnosing and curing the ills of the Republic. This idea drew upon a well-established moralizing tradition that identified vice as a contagion that had infected the res publica. Whereas Varro, Sallust, and Lucretius employed such imagery to indict Rome’s governing class for its ambitio and avaritia, Cicero used it to justify the extralegal execution of the Catilinarian conspirators. Although he sought to protect a constitution under threat, his medically inspired language helped legitimize violence as a tool of political engagement. Identifying Clodius and his allies as new malignancies in need of amputation, he contributed to a corrosive cycle of civic conflict that culminated in Pompey’s sole consulship and Caesar’s dictatorship, two constitutional innovations justified as curative remedies. In the end, his rhetoric proved susceptible to appropriation by those less invested in collegial governance than he.

Chapter 1 begins with the Fable of the Belly, a foundational myth of civic organization that Roman thinkers dated to the Conflict of the Orders. Naturalizing the hierarchical distribution of power between the senate and people, the fable identified concord as the basis of civic health. Late Republican thinkers used this metaphor to explain the problem of discord, which seemed akin to the splitting or doubling of the res publica. While writers like Cicero, Sallust, and Varro crafted such imagery to lament the loss of civic unity, Catiline used it to justify the acquisition of personal power. Describing the senate and people as separate bodies with little in common, he proposed reworking the Republican constitution to better reflect their divide. He then laid claim to the role of the caput populi, which confirmed his aspirations to tyranny. His conspiracy would be put down in a matter of months, but the language he used to articulate his ambitions proved more difficult to extinguish.

This chapter documents how the Roman elite attempted to speak to ‘popular’ concerns: Will there be enough to eat? Can we keep the favor of the gods? How will our rights to land and our own bodies be protected? What can preserve the anonymity of our votes? It starts with coins celebrating concord in the aftermath of the Catilinarian conspiracy.It then looks at the representation of religious festivals and the city's grain supply on the coinage.The next section examines numismatic evidence related to Roman agrarian policies and colonization, with particular attention to Paestum.The last section considers how the coinage reflects constitutional issues, especially the secret ballot and political rhetoric in reaction to the Sullan Constitution.