magistracies two years earlier than plebeians. Catiline's parents were Lucius Sergius Silus and Belliena. His father was poor by the standards of the aristocracy. His maternal uncle had served as praetor in 105 BC; earlier, Catiline's great-grandfather – Marcus Sergius Silus – had served with distinction as praetor in 197 BC during the Second Punic War. Early career During the Social War, Catiline served under Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, along with Strabo's son – the more famous Pompey – and Cicero. His specific title was not recorded. This is recorded on the Asculum Inscription, a bronze tablet which was once nailed to the wall of an unknown public building in Rome, which records the names of Pompeius Strabo's council (consilium) when he granted citizenship to several auxiliaries in his army; a Lucius Sergius is mentioned there, almost certainly Catiline. He married a woman named Gratidia, one of Gaius Marius's nieces. During Sulla's civil war, Catiline joined with the Sullans in 82 BC and served as a lieutenant. According to many of the ancient sources, he made himself wealthy during the Sullan proscriptions by killing his brother and two of his brothers-in-law (one brother of his wife and one husband of his sister). Cicero accused him of helping Quintus Lutatius Catulus avenge himself upon Catiline's wife's brother, Marcus Marius Gratidianus, the prosecutor who had caused the death of Catulus' father. Cicero's account – given in a campaign speech attacking Catiline, who was a rival candidate for the consulship of 63 BC, – has Catiline beheading Gratidianus and then carrying the head through the city from the Janiculum to Sulla at the Temple of Apollo; later accounts embellish the tale, describing Catiline as engaging in gratuitous cruelties against Gratidianus, as described in later sources such as Livy, Valerius Maximus, Lucan, and Florus. Some modern historians doubt Catiline was involved in Gratidianus' death except perhaps in an auxiliary role, placing blame instead on Catulus and attributing the story of Catiline's involvement to Ciceronean political slander. Regardless, Catiline did engage in profiteering from the Sullan proscriptions, likely purchasing estates for fractions of their true value, and by the end of Sulla's dictatorship, he had become a rich man. In 73 BC, he may have been prosecuted for adultery – apud pontifices (before a panel of pontiffs as judges) – with a Vestal Virgin named Fabia, a half-sister of Cicero's wife Terentia. While evidence for Fabia's