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Cato the Younger
Plutarch (46-120) - Greek biographer, historian, and philosopher,
sometimes known as the encyclopaedist of antiquity. He is most
renowned for his series of character studies, arranged mostly in
pairs, known as “Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and
Romans” or “Parallel Lives.” Cato the Younger (75 AD) - A study
of the life of Cato the Younger, a Roman philosopher and
statesman.
sometimes known as the encyclopaedist of antiquity. He is most
renowned for his series of character studies, arranged mostly in
pairs, known as “Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and
Romans” or “Parallel Lives.” Cato the Younger (75 AD) - A study
of the life of Cato the Younger, a Roman philosopher and
statesman.
First published March 1, 2001
About the author
Plutarch
3,633 books781 followersPlutarch (later named, upon becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus; AD 46–AD 120) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He is classified as a Middle Platonist. Plutarch's surviving works were written in Greek, but intended for both Greek and Roman readers.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 2, 2019
The ancient Stoics had exceptionally high standards for what they considered their idea philosopher: above all, one who would live the life of uncompromising virtue. Many ancient people attempted this demanding lifestyle but fell short. However, there was one Roman living during the time of Julius Caesar who perfectly embodied the Stoic ideal of a virtuous life: Cato the Younger. The biographer/philosopher Plutarch (45 AD – 120AD) writes of Cato and his strong, clear internal flame of virtue and love of justice and truth. Below are quotes from the text along with my comments:
“Even from his infancy, in his speech, his countenance, and all his childish pastimes, Cato was of inflexible temper, unmoved by any passion, and firm in everything. He was resolute in his purpose, much beyond the strength of his age, to go through with whatever he undertook.” Once when a politician visited Cato’s home and asked the boy if he would support his (anti-Roman) action, Cato remained silent. The politician picked Cato up and held him out an upper-story window and demanded Cato say ‘yes’. Cato remained unmoved, unalarmed and silent. The politician pulled Cato back, set him down, and said, “What a blessing for Italy, he is a but a child. If he were a man, I believe we should not gain one voice among the people.” ---------- Ah, remaining unmoved and calm in the face of death, even as a child. If there ever was a born Stoic, Cato is our man.
“Having gained the intimate acquaintance of a stoic philosopher, Cato devoted himself to the study, about everything, of moral and political doctrine. And though possessed as it were, by a kind of inspiration for the pursuit of every virtue, yet what most of all virtue and excellence fixed his affection, was that steady and inflexible Justice, which is not to be wrought upon by favor or compassion.” ---------- The four key Greco-Roman philosophical virtues were wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. And Cato, interested in law and politics, placed justice about all. A reader can almost feel Plutarch the philosopher beaming with pride as he writes about the life of Cato.
“He learned also the art of speaking and debating in public . . . His speech has noting youthful or refined in it, but was straightforward, full of matter, and rough, at the same time that there was a certain grace about his rough statements which won the attention; and the speaker’s character showing itself in all he said.” ---------- From what Plutarch writes here, it appears Cato had many of the qualities of speech attributed to that 19th century American public man of rough and straightforward character – Abraham Lincoln. No wonder the common people loved Cato.
“Amidst the corruption and disorders of that army, he showed such a love of discipline, so much bravery upon occasion, and so much courage and wisdom in everything. . . . And Cato himself acquired on the fullest measure, what it had been his least desire to seek, glory and good repute; he was highly esteemed by all men, and entirely beloved by the soldiers.” ---------- Not only all the philosophical virtues, but all the military virtues as well. In the world of ancient Rome, a winning combination.
“Since it was not in the hope of gaining honor or riches, nor out of mere impulse, or by chance that he engaged himself in politics, but he undertook the service of the state, as the proper business of an honest man, and therefore he thought himself obliged to be as constant to his public duty, as the bee to the honeycomb.” ---------- The perfect Roman statesman: 100% commitment to his county with zero interest in his own personal glory. How many Catos do we have in public office today?
However, there is a downside for a man of pure virtue participating in the public and political life of a country torn apart by internal strife, plotting, trickery, scheming, secrecy, conspiracy and bloodshed: such a man can be easily snared in the violent crossfire. And this is exactly what happened to Cato. He took the side of justice again the forces of tyranny in the person of Caesar. Back and forth, up and down with the arguing and crossing of swords culminating in that seemingly inevitable Roman event: the ultimate face-off with the winner taking all. And Caesar was to prove the victor.
Realizing Caesar would cast dishonor on him if he was ever taken prisoner, Cato chose the courageous Stoic way: he made plans to take up the sword and kill himself. When his friends and son, weeping and wailing, implored him to change his mind, Cato said: “When and how did I become deranged, and out of my senses, that thus no one tries to persuade me by reason, or show me what is better, if I am supposed to be ill-advised? Must I be disarmed and hindered from my own reason.”
Ever the follower of his conscience and reason, ever the ideal Stoic, Cato dismissed them all and, once alone, plunged the sword in his chest. But as he rolled off the bed he knocked over a table. Hearing the din, his son and friends and physician hurried back into the chamber. Seeing him thus, the physician sewed up the wound. But, Cato, recovering himself slightly, pulled out the stitches – and died. No wonder many years later, Seneca judged Cato as the man who most completely embodied the principles of the ideal Stoic philosopher.
August 11, 2019
Death of a Stoic
10 Aug 2019
Okay, this may not be the person who famously would end all of his speaches with ‘and furthermore, methinks Carthage must be destroyed’ but he is related – like he happens to be his great-grandson (so I suspect that they never actually met each other). The other thing is that I was also baffled with the idea of one being referred to as ‘the elder’ and the other as being ‘the younger’ because, well, they both happened to have been dead for around 2000 years, so in many cases it is all relative – they are pretty much the same age with all things considered, though the elder is sort of a bit older than the younger, only in the sense that he has been dead longer.
Still, considering that we happen to have two rather famous Cato’s, in the same way as we have two rather famous Pliny’s, there is probably a need to be able to distinguish them so that we don’t get confused, though it isn’t as if they do that else where, like, well, in the Bible for instance. Then again, there is also the situation where some guy names his first born son after himself, which results in them being known as ‘senior’ and ‘junior’ (and I have head some comments from people who really don’t like the idea of naming your son after yourself).
So, I guess the question comes down to what was he famous for. You could say that he is famous for the fact that he killed himself because he didn’t want to live in a realm ruled by Caeser. That sound’s pretty extreme, and honestly, as we all know, he wasn’t the only person who didn’t like Caeser – a whole bunch of them went to the effort of sticking knives into him. You could say that hindsight is 20/20, but I’m not entirely sure whether he would have had that benefit, with him being dead and all that.
Mind you, I can sort of appreciate where he happens to be coming from, because there are an awful lot of leaders out there that seem pretty bad, you know, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson to name a couple (and somebody thought that maybe one could throw Scott Morrison in there as well, but being Australian, I’m not sure if I could put Morrison into the same category, in that I don’t really consider him to be a clown). As for Cato, well, his suicide certainly seemed to define him, particularly since a sculpture was made of the event. As for it being a bit extreme, well, his friends and family thought so to, particularly since they attempted to remove all of the sharp objects from the room. The other thing of note is that he was spending his time reading Plato’s Pheado, no doubt trying to convince himself that it was a noble thing to do, in that Socrates also willingly went to his death – mind you, I’m not entirely sure whether we can consider Socrates having committed suicide, in the sense that he was sentenced to death.
So, why did he hate Caeser so much – I guess it is the same question for a lot of people, though of course there is also this idea that the patricians really didn’t like the idea of pandering to the popularies, namely because they were the great unwashed, and they really don’t know the first thing about running a country. Mind you, that is still the case today, but of course when we consider some of the people that end up being elected to parliament, and some of the things that come out of their months, we do sometimes wonder whether there is some truth to that. Then again, it isn’t necessarily the case that the so called ‘ruling class’ actually knows how to run a country, if the Great Depression is anything to go by.
Still, this was a period of Roman history when we begin to see the system tearing itself apart. I guess that is the problem with democracies, or Republics, in that vested interests are always going to attempt to pull the ruling parties either way, and there is always going to be a tension between factions. Then again, there is always this saying that goes around along the lines of ‘it may be a rotten system, but compared to the alternatives, it’s the best system’. Yeah, that might be true, and I’m not denying that, however my criticism isn’t with the system, it’s with the lack of check’s and balances on the system, and that power tends to attract a certain type of person. On the other hand, there is also the saying that goes along the lines of ‘evil triumphs when good people do nothing’. Mind you, that also comes down to one’s definition of what a good person is, and what evil is, and sometimes it just happens that it comes to a question of what is more evil – killing unborn babies, or locking up refugees in concentration camps.
10 Aug 2019
Okay, this may not be the person who famously would end all of his speaches with ‘and furthermore, methinks Carthage must be destroyed’ but he is related – like he happens to be his great-grandson (so I suspect that they never actually met each other). The other thing is that I was also baffled with the idea of one being referred to as ‘the elder’ and the other as being ‘the younger’ because, well, they both happened to have been dead for around 2000 years, so in many cases it is all relative – they are pretty much the same age with all things considered, though the elder is sort of a bit older than the younger, only in the sense that he has been dead longer.
Still, considering that we happen to have two rather famous Cato’s, in the same way as we have two rather famous Pliny’s, there is probably a need to be able to distinguish them so that we don’t get confused, though it isn’t as if they do that else where, like, well, in the Bible for instance. Then again, there is also the situation where some guy names his first born son after himself, which results in them being known as ‘senior’ and ‘junior’ (and I have head some comments from people who really don’t like the idea of naming your son after yourself).
So, I guess the question comes down to what was he famous for. You could say that he is famous for the fact that he killed himself because he didn’t want to live in a realm ruled by Caeser. That sound’s pretty extreme, and honestly, as we all know, he wasn’t the only person who didn’t like Caeser – a whole bunch of them went to the effort of sticking knives into him. You could say that hindsight is 20/20, but I’m not entirely sure whether he would have had that benefit, with him being dead and all that.
Mind you, I can sort of appreciate where he happens to be coming from, because there are an awful lot of leaders out there that seem pretty bad, you know, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson to name a couple (and somebody thought that maybe one could throw Scott Morrison in there as well, but being Australian, I’m not sure if I could put Morrison into the same category, in that I don’t really consider him to be a clown). As for Cato, well, his suicide certainly seemed to define him, particularly since a sculpture was made of the event. As for it being a bit extreme, well, his friends and family thought so to, particularly since they attempted to remove all of the sharp objects from the room. The other thing of note is that he was spending his time reading Plato’s Pheado, no doubt trying to convince himself that it was a noble thing to do, in that Socrates also willingly went to his death – mind you, I’m not entirely sure whether we can consider Socrates having committed suicide, in the sense that he was sentenced to death.
So, why did he hate Caeser so much – I guess it is the same question for a lot of people, though of course there is also this idea that the patricians really didn’t like the idea of pandering to the popularies, namely because they were the great unwashed, and they really don’t know the first thing about running a country. Mind you, that is still the case today, but of course when we consider some of the people that end up being elected to parliament, and some of the things that come out of their months, we do sometimes wonder whether there is some truth to that. Then again, it isn’t necessarily the case that the so called ‘ruling class’ actually knows how to run a country, if the Great Depression is anything to go by.
Still, this was a period of Roman history when we begin to see the system tearing itself apart. I guess that is the problem with democracies, or Republics, in that vested interests are always going to attempt to pull the ruling parties either way, and there is always going to be a tension between factions. Then again, there is always this saying that goes around along the lines of ‘it may be a rotten system, but compared to the alternatives, it’s the best system’. Yeah, that might be true, and I’m not denying that, however my criticism isn’t with the system, it’s with the lack of check’s and balances on the system, and that power tends to attract a certain type of person. On the other hand, there is also the saying that goes along the lines of ‘evil triumphs when good people do nothing’. Mind you, that also comes down to one’s definition of what a good person is, and what evil is, and sometimes it just happens that it comes to a question of what is more evil – killing unborn babies, or locking up refugees in concentration camps.
July 16, 2022
The Life of Cato the Younger by Plutarch.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
I read this for the Online Great Books program.
For me, Cato has always been a background character. In books on the late Roman Republic I've read, Cato gets mentioned, usually as part of a group, and, yet, there has always been a sense about him of apartness and respect. Mentions are always made that Cato is a paragon of Roman virtue, but apart from that not much detail is given.
Plutarch's Life of Cato makes up for this omission. We learn that Cato was an exceptional, although odd person. My OGB group felt that he might be hard to associate with because of his starchy adherence to Roman virtue. However, Cato was serious about Roman virtues, and he put his money where his mouth was. In an age of prodigies, he was a prodigy because he was not corrupt in a culture where corruption was expected but still paid lip service to integrity. Cato did not use his public offices to loot. He gave punctilious accountings. He returned more money to the treasury than he took.
The Romans did not know what to do about him other than hold him up as the icon of virtue they wanted to be on lazy afternoons when they had looted enough from the public fisc to temporarily satiate their greed.
Cato's integrity made him unpredictable. The predictable thing for him would have been to put the Catiline conspirators and Caesar to death when the political winds were blowing in that direction, but that kind of violation of due process was not done, at least it was not done to the ruling class of Rome and Cato would not agree. Because Cato would not agree, the lynch mob did not go after Caesar after satiating their blood lust on Catiline's confederates.
Death is important in Plutarch. We have the irony of world-conquering control freaks being killed by others, maybe close associates, in the case of Alexander and Caesar, but with Cicero and Cato we find them controlling the manner and time of their death. Cato famously committed suicide before submitting to the tyranny of Caesar. Caesar would have spared the life of Cato because he was Cato, but being Cato, and perhaps remembering Sulla's proscription lists and the thousands of minor betrayals he would have to engage in to avoid winding up on such a list, Cato decided that life was not worth living on those terms.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
I read this for the Online Great Books program.
For me, Cato has always been a background character. In books on the late Roman Republic I've read, Cato gets mentioned, usually as part of a group, and, yet, there has always been a sense about him of apartness and respect. Mentions are always made that Cato is a paragon of Roman virtue, but apart from that not much detail is given.
Plutarch's Life of Cato makes up for this omission. We learn that Cato was an exceptional, although odd person. My OGB group felt that he might be hard to associate with because of his starchy adherence to Roman virtue. However, Cato was serious about Roman virtues, and he put his money where his mouth was. In an age of prodigies, he was a prodigy because he was not corrupt in a culture where corruption was expected but still paid lip service to integrity. Cato did not use his public offices to loot. He gave punctilious accountings. He returned more money to the treasury than he took.
The Romans did not know what to do about him other than hold him up as the icon of virtue they wanted to be on lazy afternoons when they had looted enough from the public fisc to temporarily satiate their greed.
Cato's integrity made him unpredictable. The predictable thing for him would have been to put the Catiline conspirators and Caesar to death when the political winds were blowing in that direction, but that kind of violation of due process was not done, at least it was not done to the ruling class of Rome and Cato would not agree. Because Cato would not agree, the lynch mob did not go after Caesar after satiating their blood lust on Catiline's confederates.
Death is important in Plutarch. We have the irony of world-conquering control freaks being killed by others, maybe close associates, in the case of Alexander and Caesar, but with Cicero and Cato we find them controlling the manner and time of their death. Cato famously committed suicide before submitting to the tyranny of Caesar. Caesar would have spared the life of Cato because he was Cato, but being Cato, and perhaps remembering Sulla's proscription lists and the thousands of minor betrayals he would have to engage in to avoid winding up on such a list, Cato decided that life was not worth living on those terms.
April 20, 2017
Plutarch (46 to 125)
Biography of the Younger Cato,
If this was a novel, I would call it a ‘heartbreak’. But it is History. Roman history at a crucial and difficult time. Cato, in order to save the Republic from Tyranny, has to fight against all and everybody, Caesar, Pompey, Scipio.
His faith and loyalty to the Roman Republic and its laws as well as his strong personality is level with his famous ancestor, the Elder Cato.
He seemed to be listening to some Philosophers like Appolonidès and Demetrius, but Plutarch does not mention any in particular, he would be following. Today we would say he lived like a Saint and a Martyr.
All his efforts were in vain, as history would have it, and as Caesar emerged victorious as the future Tyrant of Rome, Cato died in a dramatic suicide.
It is a short biography, the intimate and personal life of Cato presented by Plutarch in his simple and lovely style, a pleasure to read. I will look for more of Plutarch, I know there is a good number of books to place on my shelf.
Biography of the Younger Cato,
If this was a novel, I would call it a ‘heartbreak’. But it is History. Roman history at a crucial and difficult time. Cato, in order to save the Republic from Tyranny, has to fight against all and everybody, Caesar, Pompey, Scipio.
His faith and loyalty to the Roman Republic and its laws as well as his strong personality is level with his famous ancestor, the Elder Cato.
He seemed to be listening to some Philosophers like Appolonidès and Demetrius, but Plutarch does not mention any in particular, he would be following. Today we would say he lived like a Saint and a Martyr.
All his efforts were in vain, as history would have it, and as Caesar emerged victorious as the future Tyrant of Rome, Cato died in a dramatic suicide.
It is a short biography, the intimate and personal life of Cato presented by Plutarch in his simple and lovely style, a pleasure to read. I will look for more of Plutarch, I know there is a good number of books to place on my shelf.
February 1, 2024
A reading assignment for a leadership course I'm taking. (Why am I doing that you may ask? Good question.)
I had read snippets about Cato the Younger over the years. This reading was the first to cover most of his career.
I came away with an appreciation of his integrity and commitment to principle. However, one can't help but notice that his unwillingness to bend led to Julius Caesar's destruction of the Roman Republic Cato sought to preserve.
This translation was a bit difficult to read. Or perhaps my knowledge of Roman political structures was too limited...in which case I needed more footnotes!
I had read snippets about Cato the Younger over the years. This reading was the first to cover most of his career.
I came away with an appreciation of his integrity and commitment to principle. However, one can't help but notice that his unwillingness to bend led to Julius Caesar's destruction of the Roman Republic Cato sought to preserve.
This translation was a bit difficult to read. Or perhaps my knowledge of Roman political structures was too limited...in which case I needed more footnotes!
January 17, 2017
Good translation
Good, readable translation. The spelling and grammar are clean. And a fascinating biography of a contemporary of Caesar and Pompey.
Good, readable translation. The spelling and grammar are clean. And a fascinating biography of a contemporary of Caesar and Pompey.
September 18, 2019
I've decided that Cato is now my favorite Roman, no longer Cicero.
This was a good Plutarch biography and an important one. It's a shame that more volumes of Plutarch don't contain this one.
This was a good Plutarch biography and an important one. It's a shame that more volumes of Plutarch don't contain this one.
February 17, 2013
Cato the Younger is stern but very admirable and Plutarch writes in such a way as to maximize his virtues and minimize his faults. An interesting read on the life of an antagonist of Caesar.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews