Catilina BD14870_.GIF (420 bytes) 1850

Catilina
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FURIA.
Come, - let us leave this place, flee far away,
And seek a new and better fatherland.
Here is the spirit’s loftly pride repressed;
Here baseness smothers each auspicious spark
Ere it can break into a burning flame.

Transl. Anders Orbeck.

Catilina is a young Roman nobleman in the first century B.C. He has lived a reckless youth and longs for deed and honour to restore his self respect. He enters an alliance with two delegates from the allebroges in order to clean up the degenerate state of Rome. His meeting with the Vestal virgin Furia becomes fateful. Both Catilina and his foster son Curius fall in love with this woman. She wants to elope from Rome with Catilina, but when she discovers that he was responsible for the death of her sister, she decides to take revenge on Catilina, and she gets Curius on her side. Catilina's political rebellion fails due to Furia's schemings, and when the Roman soldiers come to take Catilina prisoner, Furia succeeds in talking Catilina into killing his wife, the mild-mannered Aurelia. Then Furia stabs Catilina and disappears. Catilina and Aurelia reconcile in a last embrace before they die.
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