trial for extortion and, although he had been acquitted, was not permitted to stand for any office until three weeks had elapsed. This was the second time Catiline had been denied his chance at the consulship, and, incensed, he formed a conspiracy along with the deposed Sulla and Autronius, as well as Gnaeus Piso, against Cotta and Torquatus. The plan was apparently no less than to murder the two new Consuls-Elect on the very day they were to assume office, 1 January 65 BC, and to seize the government and Consulship for themselves. The preparations of the conspirators were however detected and they first postponed their planned coup to February, before abandoning it altogether; the conspiracy therefore coming to naught. There is much doubt as to whether the First Catilinarian Conspiracy ever took place at all, and that it was instead later invented to blacken Catiline further following the Second Catilinarian Conspiracy. An alternative view is that Catiline himself was not involved, but Sulla and Autronius on their own plotted the assassination of their rivals. In any case, no attempt was made on the lives of Cotta or Torquatus and the two assumed the consulship without incident. Implication in the Second Catilinarian conspiracy Following the disgrace of his conviction and expulsion from the Senate, Sulla's political career and reputation was completely destroyed and he could play no further part in public life. Humiliated and impoverished, Sulla reputedly joined the disreputable circle of desperate and dissolute nobles gathering around Catiline to form the Second Catilinarian Conspiracy. Catiline and his followers believed they had been robbed of the power that was rightfully theirs, and were committed to take it by any means necessary. Sulla, his cousins Publius and Servius, as well as his former colleague Autronius, were implicated in the conspiracy. Following the failure of the Conspiracy in late 63 and Catiline's death in January 62, Sulla was put on trial for his alleged complicity by Lucius Manlius Torquatus, the son of the man who had impeached him in 66. Sulla managed to secure both Marcus Tullius Cicero and Quintus Hortensius, the two greatest orators of the age, for his defence, and was acquitted of all charges. This was the occasion for Cicero delivering his Pro Sulla speech. Neither Sulla's cousins nor Autronius were so fortunate, as Cicero believed them to be guilty and refused their similar requests for defence. Career in