A commenter points me to The Roman Traitor or the Days of Cicero, Cato and Cataline: A True Tale of the Republic by Henry William Herbert. It's a novel.
It's available at the Internet Archive:
THE ROMAN TRAITOR: OR, THE DAYS OF CICERO, CATO AND CATALINE.
A TRUE TALE OF THE REPUBLIC. (1853)
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT (1807–1858)
AUTHOR OF "CROMWELL," "MARMADUKE WYVIL/ BROTHERS," ETC.
Why not a Borgia or a Catiline? POPE.
MIDNIGHT was over Rome. The skies were dark and
lowering, and ominous of tempest ; for it was a sirocco,
and the welkin was overcast with sheets of vapory cloud,
not very dense, indeed, or solid, but still sufficient to intercept the feeble twinkling of the stars, which alone held
dominion in the firmament; since the young crescent of
he moon had sunk long ago beneath the veiled horizon.
The air was thick and sultry, and so unspeakably oppressive, that for above three hours the streets had been
entirely deserted. In a few houses of the higher class,
lights might be seen dimly shining through the casements
of the small chambers, hard beside the doorway, appropriated to the use of the Atriensis, or slave whose charge it
was to guard the entrance of the court. But, for the most
part, not a single ray cheered the dull murky streets, except that here and there, before the holy shrine, or vaster
and more elaborate temple of some one of Rome's hundred gods, the votive lanthorns, though shorn of half their
beams by the dense fog-wreaths, burnt perennial.
The period was the latter time of the republic, a few
years after the fell democratic persecutions of the plebeian
Marius had drowned the mighty city oceans-deep in patrician gore; after the awful retribution of the avenger
Sylla had rioted in the destruction of that guilty faction.
Have fun!
