Is Donald Trump a Modern-Day Catiline?

Abstract

Could the story of a failed Roman politician who organized a plot to seize the Roman republic in 63 BCE be a metaphor for Donald Trump’s political persona—his initial presidential run against the establishment, his rhetorical effort to overthrow the status quo and the natural order of things in national politics, the love affair Trump has always had with the struggling working-class voters (with the “forgotten” Americans), his constant testing the constitutional limits of our republican system of government? Could both figures be symptoms of times when a republic is in crisis and reminders of the perils that political divisiveness and civil disunion bring to a democracy?