His Maculate Origin

Born in 95 BC in the city of Rome, Cato quickly grew into a stubborn, willful child. The Greek-became-Roman-citizen Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch) chronicled several events from Cato’s life, including his refusal to support the Marsi in the Social War – despite having been dangled out a window by his ankles, said dangle having been carried out by the leader of the Marsi, one Quintus Poppaedius Silo. This was Cato’s first public display of ballsiness, and, while it is not our place to question Plutarch’s chronicling of these events, it’s important to note that Cato would have been around four years old at this time. 

It is from Plutarch's writing that we know as much as we do about Cato, as he wrote very little himself. Most of the history here is derived from his work.

During the dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the dictator often sought out the then-fourteen-year-old Cato and his brother Caepio for conversation, despite Cato’s outspoken opposition to the dictator. Cato’s tutor, Sarpedon, cautioned Cato about his opposition, noting that Sulla had taken a free hand in executing Roman nobles who opposed him; Cato replied by asking for a sword, after which Sarpedon somehow managed to curtail the boy’s public excursions.

Cato had quite a few notable relations. Among them: His half-sister, Servilia Major, was the long-standing mistress of Julius Caesar and the mother of Marcus Junius Brutus. At age 21, he married a woman about whom little is known but her name, Atilia; with her, he had two children, his son Marcus Porcius Cato and his daughter Porcia, who would later marry the same Marcus Junius Brutus. This connection would have significant meaning in the civil war that was to come.

His Adventurous Career

On reaching the age of majority and receiving his inheritance, Cato left the house of the uncle where he had spent his childhood. While his inherited wealth would have allowed him a life of luxury, Plutarch tells us that the young Cato eschewed unnecessary comforts and instead dove deep into Stoic philosophy, living modestly, eating no more than necessary, drinking only (apparently a great deal of) cheap wine, wearing plain, undyed robes and even doing without shoes. He cultivated physical endurance, exposing himself to all conditions of heat, cold, and dampness to better enable himself to withstand discomfort.

Cato was 23 when the Third Punic War began in 72 BC. (Honestly, I always thought I would have taken Spartacus’s side on that one, but still…) He quickly volunteered to join his brother Caepio in the field. The brothers didn’t have much impact in that war, but five years later, in 67 BC, Cato was given command of a legion in Macedonia. There, he impressed his troops by sharing their food, drink, and living conditions. Cato, true to his Stoic philosophy, chose to forgo the luxuries afforded other commanders and slept among his men. He led their marches from the front, and only left his legion when he received word of his brother, wounded and dying in Thrace.

The death of his brother hit Cato hard. After burying his sibling, Cato embarked on an extensive walkabout of Rome’s eastern provinces and did not return to Rome until 65 BC.

On his return to Rome, Cato was elected quaestor, a position that put the Stoic in the position of being able to audit and, to some extent, control the state Treasury. His strict rectitude and incorruptibility made him unpopular in this position, as he quickly moved to prosecute several nobles – including some of the former dictator Sulla’s inner circle – for illegal appropriation of funds and for filing fraudulent documents. (Sound familiar?) Cato made himself plenty of enemies in this role, about which he appeared to not give even one single ounce of crap.

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In 63 BC, Cato was elected Tribune of Plebs, in which role he assisted the sitting Consul, Marcus Tullius Cicero, in squashing the Cataline Rebellion. Once the rebellion was put down, Cato, in a display of his usual inflexibility, wanted the conspirators executed, but a Roman general named Gaius Julius Caesar insisted instead on exiling the malefactors, spreading them among several far-flung Roman settlements for “safekeeping.”

The animosity between Cato and Caesar appears to date from this point.

Around this time, Caesar, General Gnaeus Pompey Magnus, and Marcus Licinius Crassus formed a triumvirate and began slowly consolidating power between the three of them. Cato opposed the triumvirate at every turn. In 61 BC, Pompey returned from a campaign in Asia and demanded both a Triumph and that the Senate postpone elections to allow him to run for Consul; Cato opposed the measure, convincing the Senate to allow Pompey only one of the two options. Pompey chose the Consul’s chair over the Triumph, but faced with the same demand from Caesar, Cato was forced to resort to a filibuster. Unlike today’s proceedings in our own Senate, Cato had to hold the floor and speak, which he did so until sunset brought an end to the proceedings.

In time, Caesar became Consul and immediately proposed to award his veteran troops with rich farmlands in Campania. As this province and its agriculture provided almost a fourth of the Republic’s tax revenue, Cato again took to the rostrum to oppose the measure – upon which Caesar had the Consul’s Lictors forcibly remove Cato from the Senate, an insult which Cato was not to forget. Still not giving even one tiny little crap, Cato resolved to oppose Caesar’s ambitions at every turn.

But the Triumvirate was on shaky ground at this point. Caesar’s ambitions were about to bring him into conflict with his fellow triumvirs. It turns out that Cato’s inflexibility and zeal in prosecuting Sullan nobles had brought him into conflict with a famous general, the aforementioned Gnaeus Pompey Magnus, who had been known as The Teenage Butcher for his zeal in persecuting Sulla’s enemies. It is ironic, then, that this very general would come to be an ally of Cato’s in the coming unpleasantness.

The solidity of Cato’s big brass pair was about to be tested.

His One-Man War

Matters came to a head in 49 BC. Cato was then in the Senate, a key member of a group of republican Senators known as the Optimates. In that fateful year, Caesar was winding up his campaigns in Gaul, having defeated and taken prisoner the Celtic king/warlord Vercingetorix. Before the Senate, Cato insisted that Caesar’s term as proconsul had ended, and with it his proconsular immunity; he demanded Caesar return to Rome as an ordinary citizen, there to face charges.

Cato’s now-ally, Pompey, was willing to let Caesar accept the continuation of his immunity along with giving up all but one of his legions and accepting governorship of one province, but Cato refused the compromise and managed to ram through a resolution recalling Caesar.

The conqueror of Gaul didn’t take this well. He crossed the Rubicon with one legion and marched on Rome. Marcus Anneus Lucanus chronicled that moment in “Pharsalia”:

What seek ye, men of Rome? and whither hence Bear ye my standards? If by right ye come, My citizens, stay here; these are the bounds; No further dare.' 

But Caesar's hair was stiff With horror as he gazed, and ghastly dread Restrained his footsteps on the further bank. Then spake he, ' Thunderer, who from the rock Tarpeian seest the wall of mighty Rome; Gods of my race who watched o'er Troy of old; Thou Jove of Alba's height, and Vestal fires, 

And rites of Romulus erst rapt to heaven, And God-like Rome; be friendly to my quest. Not with offence or hostile arms I come, Thy Caesar, conqueror by land and sea, Thy soldier here and wheresoe'er thou wilt: No other's; his, his only be the guilt Whose acts make me thy foe.'

Caesar had indeed decided to follow Fortune, and Fortune had clearly taken him as a pet, for with one legion, he drove Pompey and the Optimates out of Rome and into Greece, where at Pharsalus, the outnumbered Caesar seized victory from the jaws of defeat and sent Pompey and the remnants of the Optimates fleeing. Pompey went to Egypt, where he met execution at the hands of Ptolemey’s minions seeking to curry favor with Rome. Cato and Quintus Metellus Scipio fled to Utica in North Africa, determined to fight to the end for the Republic.

Caesar followed.

The final battle was fought at Thapsus, where Caesar was again victorious, and against the normal custom, Caesar ordered the execution of all of Scipio’s men. Cato was not present at the battle, having remained within Utica. At this point, even the adamant Stoic had to concede defeat. His fight for the republic, for the rights of the citizens of Rome, was over. This was the beginning of tyranny in Rome.

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His Defiant Ending

Cato, sadly, wasn’t to enjoy any happy golden years.

Refusing a pardon from Caesar, Cato took up a sword and plunged it into his stomach. Plutarch wrote:

And now the birds were already beginning to sing, when he fell asleep again for a little while. And when Butas came and told him that harbours were very quiet, he ordered him to close the door, throwing himself down upon his couch as if he were going to rest there for what still remained of the night. But when Butas had gone out, Cato drew his sword from its sheath and stabbed himself below the breast. His thrust, however, was somewhat feeble, owing to the inflammation in his hand, and so he did not at once dispatch himself, but in his death struggle fell from the couch and made a loud noise by overturning a geometrical abacusb that stood near. His servants heard the noise and cried out, and his son at once ran in, together with his friends. They saw that he was smeared with blood, and that most of his bowels were protruding, but that he still had his eyes open and was alive; and they were terribly shocked. But the physician went to him and tried to replace his bowels, which remained uninjured, and to sew up the wound. Accordingly, when Cato recovered and became aware of this, he pushed the physician away, tore his bowels with his hands, rent the wound still more, and so died.

Thus, perished the man who has been described as the last citizen of Rome. He opposed Caesar with all of his breath, standing for the founding principles of the Republic. He was reputed to be a prickly, difficult man, and very likely a high-functioning alcoholic (hardly a novelty in those times). But he was a man of principle and, unlike most pols today, was willing to stick to his principles even unto death.

Caesar, now, his story has been told, by Plutarch, Lucanus, Livy, Shakespeare, and many more. He won his war and was assassinated by a man who had been one of his closest friends, but his adopted son Octavian seized control and became, effectively, Rome’s first Emperor.

You could very well argue that when Cato died, the Republic died with him.

And where is our Cato today? Granted what Cato fought for was, essentially, the rule by an elite, but at least the Roman Senate was elected — as much as any governing body was at the time — as opposed to the tyranny of the Emperors that was to follow. But we must judge people not by our times but by theirs, and in his day, Cato was as much an advocate for liberty as one will find.

One might argue – I would – that our republic is today threatened, not least by those who, as I say at the beginning of this piece, are not fit to stand in Cato’s shadow. Why have we not men like this today? Cato, of course, failed, and the Roman Republic fell. But will our republic fall, not with a bang, but a whimper? Will our republic fall, not to the iron fist of a Caesar, but to the whining of the “woke?”

We need a Cato. We need a Cicero as well, an orator and philosopher who can lend eloquent words to the cause of saving our republic, but Cicero’s is a story for another day. From where will come our incorruptible Stoic? From where will come the statesman who will confront those who will drag our republic to ruin and tell them, “No, no further; this ends now”?

I’m concerned by the apparent fact that men like him no longer exist. I hope I’m wrong. I’m afraid I’m not.