Sallust's account of the conspiracy raises considerable historical problems, and the moral intention and political bias and style can make him a difficult author for Middle School level students to understand, so this text makes Catiline as concise and comprehensible as possible.

To clarify and simplify the Latin text of Sallust's Catiline, this school edition omits speeches and passages of moral reflection, and the style and spelling have been modified to introduce more common words and to suit those with an elementary knowledge of Latin. The editor has removed historic infinitives, phrase or sentence whose difficulty seemed to outweigh its significance, and rephrased where it would seem helpful to understanding.

The text is supplemented by an introduction giving necessary background, comprehensive questions, classified vocabulary, passages for retranslation, and Ciceronian passages in eight appendixes. A classified vocabulary list provides scope for the methodical acquisition and revision of vocabulary; the number of words listed for each chapter is distributed fairly evenly,