Plutarch’s Lives: Life of Cato the Younger

The Life of Cato the Younger by Plutarch.

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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.