THE LIFE OF CAT CATO THE CENSOR. SUMMARY. His ancestors. Origin of the name of Cato. His eloquence and bravery. He profits by the example of Curius, and the instruc. tion of Nearchus the philosopher. Valerius draws him to Rome, He attaches himself to Fabius Maximus, and refuses to attend Scipio into Africa. His eloquence and primitiveness of manners gain him the admiration of the Romans. His excessive economy. Kindness of the Athenians, even to animals. His integrity in the government of Sardinia. His style; and memorable sayings. His remonstrances to the Romans: bon mots: his consulship and expedition into Spain. He is superseded by Scipio. His triumph. His campaigns in Thrace and Greece. He retains the Greek cities in their subjection. He sends to reconnoitre the Straits of Thermopylæ. Difficulties in passing them. His zeal for justice, and against the vitious. He stands for the office of Censor. Apprehensions of the higher classes, by whom he is ineffectually opposed. He gains his election, and displays great severity in the discharge of his duty. Incurs the odium of the wealthy by his imposts on articles of luxury: braves their resentment, and defeats their hostility. The people erect a statue to his honour, for having reformed the public manners. His domestic virtues. The education, which he himself gives his son, and its success. His treatment of his slaves. He gives up agriculture for commerce. · Arrival of Carneades, and Diogenes the stoic at Rome. Cato's opinions upon Greek literature, philosophy, and medicine. His second marriage. He loses his son: his fortitude under this calamity. His mode of life in the country. He is sent to Carthage, to make up a quarrel between Masinissa and the inhabitants of that city. He excites the third Punic war. His death, and posterity. MARCUS CATO (it is said) was born at Tusculum, of which place his family originally was, and before he was concerned in civil or military affairs, lived upon an estate which his father had left him near the country of the Sabines. Though his ancestors were reckoned to have been persons of no note, yet Cato himself boasts of his father, as a brave man and an excellent soldier; and assures us that his great grandfather Cato received several military rewards, and that having had five horses killed under him, he had the value of them paid him out of the treasury, as an acknowledgment of his gallant behaviour. As the Romans always gave the appellation of "New Men1" to those who, having no honours transmitted to them from their ancestors, were the first of their family to distinguish themselves, they designated Cato by the same term: but he used to say that he was new indeed with respect to offices and dignities, but with regard to the services and virtues of his ancestors, very ancient. His third name, at first, was not Cato, but Priscus. It was subsequently changed to that of Cato, on ac 1 The jus imaginum was annexed to the great offices of state, and none had their statues or pictures, but such as had borne those offices. He therefore, who had the pictures of his ancestors, was called 'noble;' he who had only his own, a new man;' and he, who had neither the one nor the other, ignoble.' So says Asconius. But it does not appear that a man who had borne a great office, the consulate for instance, was 'ignoble' because he had not his statue or picture; for he might not choose it. Cato himself did not choose it: his reason, we suppose, was because he had none of his ancestors, though he himself assigned ano. ther. (See A. Gell. xiii. 19.) count of his remarkable wisdom; for the Romans call wise men Catos2.' He had red hair and gray eyes, as the following little epigram ill naturedly enough declares: With eyes so gray and hair so red, Thou'lt fright the shades when thou art dead, Inured to labour and temperance, and brought up as it were in camps, he had an excellent constitution with respect to strength, as well as health. Eloquence he considered as a kind of second body, an instrument of great things, not only useful but necessary for every man, who does not choose to live obscure and inactive: hence he exercised and improved that talent in the neighbouring boroughs and villages, by undertaking the causes of such as applied to him; so that he was soon allowed to be an able pleader, and afterward a good orator. From this time, all that conversed with him discovered in him such a gravity of behaviour, such a dignity and depth of sentiment, as qualified him for the greatest affairs in the most respectable government in the world. For he was not only so disinterested as to plead without reward, but it appeared that even the honour to be gained in these contests was not his principal view. His ambition was military glory; and, when yet but a youth, he had fought in so many battles, that his breast was full of scars. He himself informs us that he made his first campaign at seventeen years of age, when Annibal in the height of his prosperity was laying Italy waste with fire and sword. In battle he stood with a firm and steadfast foot, a powerful arm, and a fierce countenance, and spoke to his 2 The Latin word catus signifies prudent: and he appears to have been the first, who bore it as a proper name. 3 The epigrammatist, when he says that he was ravdanes, one that bit every thing which came in his way,' plays upon his name of Porcius (qu. Porcus, ' Hog.') 4 If we refer this to the year of the battle of Cannæ, A. U. C. 538. we shall find Cato, as Cicero states, was born A. U. C. 521. M. Ricard from Cic. de Senect. iv., states his birth to have taken place A. U. C. 519., and his first campaign A. U. C. 539.* enemy in a threatening and dreadful acccent; for he rightly judged, and endeavoured to convince others, that. such a kind of behaviour often strikes an adversary with more terror than the sword itself. He always marched on foot, and carried his own arms, followed only by one servant who carried his provisions. And he never, it is said, was angry or found fault with that servant, whatever he set before him; but, when he was at leisure from military duty, would ease and assist him in dressing it. All the time he was in the army, he drank nothing but water, except that when almost consumed with thirst, he would ask for a little vinegar, or when he found his strength exhausted, he would take a little wine. Near his country seat was a cottage formerly belonging to Manius Curius, who was thrice honoured with a triumph. Cato often walked thither, and reflecting on the smallness of the farm and the meanness of the dwelling, used to meditate upon the peculiar virtues of the man who (though he was the most illustrious character in Rome, had subdued the fiercest nations, and driven Pyrrhus out of Italy) cultivated this little spot of ground with his own hands, and after three triumphs retired to this cottage. Here the embassadors of the Samnites found him in the chimney corner dressing turnips, and offered him a large present of gold: but he absolutely refused it, remarking, "A man, who can be satisfied with such a supper, has no need of gold; and I think it more glorious to conquer the possessors of it, than to possess it myself." Full of these thoughts, Cato returned home; and taking a view of his own estate, his servants, and his manner of living, increased his labour and retrenched his expenses. When Fabius Maximus took the city of Tarentum, 5 Ogos LuxTixov, says Hippocrates; and on account of its cooling quality, it was usually given to labourers in the harvest. (See Ruth, ii. 14.)* 6 Manius Curius Dentatus triumphed twice in his first consulate (see Hor. I. xii. 41., Flor. i. 15.) over the Samnites, and over the Sabines. And eight years after that, in his third consulate, he triumphed over Pyrrhus. He, subsequently, led up an Ovation for his victory over the Lucanians. (L.) This was the great man, who after so many achievements and honours, pronounced that Cato, who was then very young7, served under him. Happening at that time to lodge with a Pythagorean philosopher named Nearchus, he desired to hear some of his doctrine; and learning from him the same maxims which Plato advances, "That pleasure is the strongest incentive to evil; that the heaviest burthen to the soul is the body, from which she cannot disengage or preserve herself, but by such a wise use of reason as shall wean and separate her from all corporeal passions,"he became still more attached to frugality and temperance. Yet it is said that he learned Greek very late, and was considerably advanced in years when he began to read the writers in that language, from whom he improved his eloquence, somewhat by Thucydides, but by Demosthenes much more. His own writings, indeed, are sufficiently adorned with precepts and examples borrowed from the Greek; and among his Maxims and Sentences we find many, that are literally translated from the same originals. At that time there flourished a Roman nobleman of great eminence, called Valerius Flaccus, whose penetration enabled him to distinguish a youth of rising virtue, and whose benevolence inclined him to encourage and conduct him in the path of glory. This nobleman had an estate contiguous to Cato's, where he often heard his servants speak of his neighbour's laborious and temperate manner of life. They told him, that he used to go early in the morning to the little towns in the neighbourhood, and defend the causes of such as applied to him: that thence he would return to his farm, where in a coarse frock if it was winter, and naked if it was summer, he would labour with his domestics, and afterward sit down with them, and partake of their bread citizen a pernicious one, who did not find seven acres of land (the quantity prescribed upon the expulsion of the kings) sufficient for his subsistence. (Plin. H. N. xviii. 3.)* 7 Fabius Maximus took Tarentum in his fifth consulate, A. U. C. 544, Cato was then twenty-three years old; but he had made his first campaign under the same Fabius five years before. 8 Euis, a short and strait garment simply covering the shoulders. See A. Gell, vii. 12. In this summer costume we have the nudus ara of Virgil, Georg. i. 299.* |