The Historians' History of the World 05

The embarkation was at this moment proceeding, and Cato repeatedly inquired who had already put out to sea, and what were the prospects of the voyage. Retiring to his chamber he took up the Dialogue on the Soul, in which Plato recorded his dying master’s last aspirations after immortality. After reading for some time he looked up and observed that his sword had been removed. In the irritation of the moment he gave way to a burst of violence, such as often marked the behaviour of the Roman master to his slave; calling his attendant to his presence he struck him on the mouth, bruising his own hand with the blow. He then sent for his son and friends, and rebuked them sharply for their unworthy precaution; “as if,” he said, “I needed a sword to kill myself, and might not, if I chose, put an end to my existence by dashing my head against the wall, or merely by holding my breath.” Reassured perhaps for the moment by the calmness of his demeanour, they restored him his weapon, and at his earnest desire once more left him alone. At midnight, still anxious about those who were departing, he sent once again to inquire if the embarkation were completed. The messenger returned with the assurance that the last vessel was now on the point of leaving the quay. Thereupon Cato threw himself on his bed, as if about to take his rest for the night; but when all was quiet he seized his sword and thrust it into his stomach. The wound was not immediately mortal, and the victim rolled groaning on the floor. The noise at once summoned his anxious attendants. A surgeon was at hand, and the sufferer was unconscious while the protruding intestines were replaced, and the gash sewn up. But on coming to himself he repulsed his disconsolate friends, and tearing open the fatal wound, expired with the same dogged resolution which had distinguished every action of his life.

Death of Cato

(From a drawing by Mirys)

Cato had no cause to despair of retaining life under the new tyranny. At an earlier period he had meditated, in such a contingency, seeking refuge in retirement and philosophy. But his views of the highest good had deepened and saddened with the fall of the men and things he most admired. He now calmly persuaded himself that with the loss of free action the end of his being had failed of its accomplishment. He regarded his career as prematurely closed, and deemed it his duty to extinguish an abortive existence.[121] Cæsar, when he heard of his self-destruction, lamented that he had been robbed of the pleasure of pardoning him, and to his comrades in arms he exhibited, according to the most credible accounts, the same clemency by which he had so long distinguished himself. But the same man who could now speak and act thus generously, did not scruple, at a later period, to reply to Cicero’s panegyric with a book which he called the Anti-Cato

, in which he ridiculed the sage’s vain pretensions, and scoffed at him for raking in his brother’s ashes for the golden ornaments of his pyre, for transferring to Hortensius the wife who had borne him as many children as he desired, and taking the widow to his arms again enriched with a magnificent dowry. Could the proud philosopher have anticipated a time when the wantonness of power might sport unchecked with the good fame of its victims, he would have shrunk from such moral degradation with greater horror than from the servitude of the body.c

SALLUST’S COMPARISON OF CÆSAR AND CATO

“After hearing and reading of the many glorious achievements which the Roman people had performed at home and in the field, by sea as well as by land, I happened to be led to consider what had been the great foundation of such illustrious deeds. I knew that the Romans had frequently, with small bodies of men, encountered vast armies of the enemy; I was aware that they had carried on wars with limited forces against powerful sovereigns; that they had often sustained, too, the violence of adverse fortune; yet that, while the Greeks excelled them in eloquence, the Gauls surpassed them in military glory. After much reflection, I felt convinced that the eminent virtue of a few citizens had been the cause of all these successes; and hence it had happened that poverty had triumphed over riches, and a few over a multitude. And even in later times, when the state had become corrupted by luxury and indolence, the republic still supported itself, by its own strength, under the misconduct of its generals and magistrates; when, as if the parent stock were exhausted, there was certainly not produced at Rome, for many years, a single citizen of eminent ability. Within my recollection, however, there arose two men of remarkable powers, though of very different character, Marcus Cato and Caius Cæsar, whom, since the subject has brought them before me, it is not my intention to pass in silence, but to describe, to the best of my ability, the disposition and manners of each.