In one sense, Cato doesn’t seem to be a political man. He doesn’t care for high office or esteem, he is “unfit for the business of canvassing,” and when he loses his first election, he refuses to run again despite his friends’ entreaties (728). “Inflexible” and “resolute,” he cares little what others think of or want from him (707). This culminates in his final action: pulling out his guts in front of his horrified friends, family, and doctor in order to stop them from saving his life. When he sets his mind to something, he is loath to back down or compromise. Surely a man so black and white is unsuited for the gray world of politics.
But in another sense, Cato is the most political man there is. His “principle and only aim” is the liberty of Rome, a commonwealth to which he is devoted “as the bee to the honeycomb” (730, 714). Throughout Plutarch’s depiction of his life, we see Cato put his city before himself. But this isn’t easy for a man when his city does not share the same commitment to virtue that he does. What if the good of Rome does not align with the good simply? What if, for the sake of his city, Cato must step outside the bounds of what his philosophy deems to be right? The virtue of a citizen and the virtue of a man are sometimes at odds. When these two responsibilities demand contradictory things of him, one wonders whether Cato can square them.
For the most part Cato acts “contrary to the ordinary ways of the world” (709). The average Roman is not an exemplar of virtue. But sometimes we see Cato “give way to the times,” adopting the practices of others even if they seem wrong (721). His morals are like a tree which bends when the winds are strong enough. He bends them the most when he takes an oath for Caesar, who is not just his personal enemy, but also the enemy of the Republic itself.
This oath presents a problem for anyone trying to interpret Cato’s life. One can imagine two alternative Catos which would have been easier to understand than one we find in Lives. The first is one who never took the oath, remaining unmoved for the entirety of his life. A reader could understand this man in a vacuum. Replace ancient Rome with any other time and place and he would remain Cato, just as a solid retains its shape in any environment. The second imaginary Cato is on the opposite extreme. He changes his mind whenever his beliefs become difficult or unpopular. He takes every oath that a stronger man demands him to. Slave to circumstance, this second Cato is an image of the political landscape around him, never his own man.
It is his closeness to the first alternative we imagined, the unmoved man, that makes Plutarch’s Cato exceptional. But once he takes the oath, he departs from this ideal, and he must decide how much farther from it he is willing to stray. How does Cato decide when to yield and when to stand his ground, which oaths to take and which to refuse?
To answer this question, we must first examine the oath and its context. Caesar, seeking the people’s support, enacts a law distributing land to the masses. The oath is a promise the senators must make—under threat of exile—to enforce and defend that law. Cato admits that he doesn’t take issue with the land distribution itself. The oath is about more than that. Any senator who takes the oath validates Caesar’s blatant purchasing of the people’s favor.
By taking the oath he also affirms a more dangerous premise. Caesar’s party was only able to pass the land law by violent means, using “dung,” “rods,” and “darts” to expel their opponents from the forum (720). Additionally, Caesar’s oath promises exile for those who refuse it. So any senator who takes the oath, even if he does not take it because the threat compels him to, legitimizes the practice of “using… forces to compel [the senate’s] judgement” (729). This senator confirms that he, along with the republican body he represents, will bow down before any demagogue with the means and the audacity to threaten him. He affirms force to be reason’s master. Thus Caesar gives Cato a choice: leave Rome unconquered, or stay having submitted to a villain.
Caesar’s attempt to compel the senate must have reminded Cato of his youth. When he was fourteen, an older and stronger man dangled him out of a window and threatened to drop him if he did not yield. Not only did the teenager refuse the demands of his superior, the expression on his face did not even change. Plutarch tells us this story as an image of the rest of Cato’s life, an image which becomes especially striking when we reach the oath he must take. When Caesar makes him choose between submission and exile, Cato finds himself dangled out of the window once more. He is first inclined to make the same choice he made at fourteen: reject the oath and suffer the consequences. He refuses to be moved by one superior to him in strength but not in virtue. His friends’ and family’s pleas are as powerless to change his mind as Caesar’s threats.
The man refuses to let anyone compel him, and he is insulted when anyone tries. When his servants take his sword away to prevent his suicide, he admonishes them: “how did I become deranged, and out of my senses, that thus … [I must be] disarmed, and hindered from using my own reason?” (736). He is offended because his self-mastery is at stake. He cannot allow another to control him, nor can he allow them to even think they can. Only Cato rules Cato. He would sacrifice his citizenship, his career, and his life before he sacrificed his mastery over himself. But in the context of the oath this thinking is short-sighted. The insult that Cato would feel if he lets Caesar control him, is nothing compared to the danger he puts Rome in if he doesn’t. What the city needs from Cato is not his defiance but his submission. But this is not something he can realize on his own.
After many failed attempts by family and friends, it is Cicero, the master rhetorician, who finally convinces Cato to take the oath. Cicero makes three arguments, though Plutarch does not tell us which of these was (or were) successful. Nevertheless, something in Cicero’s speech persuades Cato to turn away from his nature, let go of his pride, and flatter the man who holds him by his ankles and threatens to let him fall. This makes the few paragraphs of Cicero’s arguments some of the most important in the text. Without understanding how this speech changes him, we can only hope to reach a shallow understanding of Cato’s character.
Cicero’s first argument is that it might not be right for a private man to oppose what the public has decreed. According to this argument, a senator like Cato should uphold and enforce the land distribution law, with or without an oath requiring him to do so. Such is the duty of the governing body—who is one man to say otherwise? It is plausible that Cato agrees with this. His stubbornness is not such that he only follows laws when they happen to align with his strict sense of justice. Obedience to law is key to this sense. This may seem at odds with his self-mastery, but obedience is not the same as compulsion. Other Romans may not see this distinction, but Cato does.
Consider the following example. The senate made a law requiring candidates for public office to personally learn the names of the people, without the help of an assistant. No one enforces this law, ergo, no one follows it. No one but Cato. Following this law makes it harder for him to carry out a campaign, which puts him at a disadvantage to the other candidates who break the law. But he is unconcerned with the consequences or benefits that a law provides; what matters is that it is the law. Unlike other Romans, who obey the law because someone else enforces it, Cato obeys the law because he enforces it on himself. He doesn’t follow Rome’s laws because he fears the consequences of breaking them, but rather because obedience to the law is itself a moral good.
This holds even if the law is unjust. Clodius is a bad man and a worse ruler, but Cato still defends the legitimacy of his edicts: “if he had done ill in his office, he ought to be called to account for it; but the authority of the magistracy ought not to suffer for the faults of the magistrate” (723). Anyone who wishes to keep the force of law intact must be willing to obey an unjust law until he is able change it. If he thought that he had permission to disobey any law he considered unjust, Cato would scarcely be different from Caesar. His citizenship would be conditional, and the fact that he is Roman, accidental. And if everyone thought they had the right to bypass laws they considered wrong, then each law would cease to be anything more than another piece of writing or speech, a suggestion having no more weight than any other. Without a single source of authority, multiple spring up, and no one knows who to follow. This is why maintaining “the authority of the magistracy,” or the force of law, is so important. Without it, law becomes arbitrary, and eventually the strongest wins. Reason is forgotten. Cato values the authority of the magistracy so much that, in a time of crisis, he urges the Senate to cede their power to Pompey, because any system where law reigns is “better than mere confusion” (727).
To reject Caesar’s oath when all other senators accept it, Cicero argues, would be to embrace confusion. After all, Caesar’s orders hardly seem different from Clodius’ or Pompey’s. Don’t all of these men have the same authority of the magistracy, all of their orders equal force of law?
Well, no. Clodius’ laws may have been unjust, but Caesar’s are illegal. This is why Cato, out of respect for law, can disobey Caesar’s. An illegal law sounds oxymoronic, but Caesar’s order to the Senate is only a law nominally, i.e., insofar as it is a command from government authority that carries with it a threat of punishment. But in order to be a law in any deeper sense, it must come from a source greater than the man who declares it—for instance, bodies like the Senate and offices like the tribune, quaestor, and consul. The office must contain and outlive the officer. Otherwise the distinction between magistracy and magistrate disappears.
Clodius came to power by immoral but legal means, and the office he abused was a preexisting one. But Caesar came to power by bribery and violence, and his office, though preexisting in title, is in reality his own creation. His is not the office of the consul, but simply the office of Caesar. By exceeding his authority, thinks Cato, Caesar forfeits it. A consul has the authority to distribute land, but not to prevent the senate from ever repealing his law. He certainly doesn’t have the authority to exile any senator who opposes him, taking away from the senate its lawgiving power. Passing law by the sword, he is no magistrate but a tyrant. Contrary to Cicero’s argument, submission to Caesar cannot help, but only harm, the authority of law. How can Cicero justify obeying a tyrant?
According to Cicero, it is not Caesar whom Cato would be obeying by taking the oath, but rather “the public” (720). Cicero is referring to a unified group with a single will, so he cannot be talking about all Romans—Rome, soon to be at civil war, is not a unit. What he means is more specific: the senators who voted for the land law and the commoners who benefit from it. In other words, Caesar’s partisans.
We understand “the public” more clearly in its distinction from the “private man,” Cato (720). But Cato is not a private man in most senses of the word. As a senator, Cato is a public man, representing the people who elected him. These men knew he was Caesar’s enemy when they voted for him, so once elected he has not just a right, but a duty to resist Caesar’s party, since this is what his electors want. But if “the public” means the most powerful party in Rome, and if every senator is beholden to it, then reason and argument disappear from the forum. What makes submitting to a more populous group any different from submitting to a stronger man? Cicero doesn’t answer this question, making his first argument flimsy at best. Knowing this, he doesn’t argue it with his whole heart, using the word “perhaps” to qualify his claim (720).
Nevertheless, something in Cicero’s first argument would have caught Cato’s attention. While Cato is not a private man insofar as he is a senator, he is a private man insofar as he is only one person. And he believes that no one person should impose his will on the public. Two examples stand out of him acting on this principle. The first is his refusal to rerun for office after losing his election for consul, because “the voice of the people” spoke clearly (728). Cato will not override the public’s choice nor even ask them to reconsider. The second example is Cato’s treatment of the 300 senators and merchants whom he gathers as Caesar’s army approaches. He wants them to fight bravely in defense of liberty, and could have persuaded them to do so, but instead he lets them decide amongst themselves whether they want to fight or surrender. He hates to compel others as much as he hates to be compelled.
If Cicero’s first argument doesn’t convince Cato, it is not because it is wrong on its face. Cato agrees that a private man should obey the will of the public, but he is unconvinced that the public actually wants to submit to Caesar, and less convinced that a senator can be considered a private man.
His first argument fails, but perhaps his second succeeds. It would be foolish, Cicero continues, to fight Caesar on a front that he has already won. A protest made too late is a protest made in vain. This thinking is fatalistic, but it might not be false. If there is no hope of making something better, why should Cato risk his citizenship or his life for it? But Cicero is assuming that Cato’s goal is to stop the distribution of land, while what he truly wants is less material.
When Pompey seeks tyrannical power, Cato disputes him on trivial matters in order to curb Pompey’s high designs. His goal is similar with Caesar. It does not matter if Cato succeeds on the issue of distributed land. Refusing the oath shows Caesar, the Senate, and all other Romans that not everyone will bow down to a tyrant. And this is victory enough. It might even be worth suffering exile.
Cicero couldn’t have been the first man to condemn Cato for “folly and madness” (720). The calculus with which he makes his decisions is unlike anyone else’s. When he was a teenager, he was baffled that the victims of Sylla’s regime didn’t kill him. “They fear him,” one adult tried to explain, “more than they hate him” (708). Upon hearing this Cato resolved to kill the tyrant on the spot. Fast forward to adulthood, and Cato is the only senator who didn’t “see... the necessity [he was] in” the moment Caesar threatened exile (720). The necessity that drives the senators to take the oath is much like the necessity that drives the adults to suffer Sylla’s tyranny: Cato does not seem to notice it. How others respond to his actions, such as by exiling him or throwing him out of a window, is not his immediate concern. Like the Spartan 300, who knew but paid little mind to the fact that they’d all be killed at Thermopylae, all that matters to Cato when he makes a decision is whether it is right or wrong.
For this reason, many powerful men fear Cato even when he is “unarmed [and] naked” (718). Tyrants fear a man who doesn’t kneel or lay down when everyone else does, because this kind of man is hard to control. On his own, a man like Cato would pose no difficulty for Caesar. The problem, however, is that the virtuous actions alone “can so affect men’s minds as to create … desire to imitate the doers of them” (140, Life of Pericles). The image of Cato hanging out of the window will illustrate this point well. When Pompaedius realizes that no amount of shaking will make Cato yield, he pulls him back inside the house and admits relief that he is only a boy.
“If he were a man,” he says, “I believe we should not gain one voice among the people” (708). Not only would his party fail, but no man in Rome would support it! Pompaedius sees in Cato a character so great that it threatens to strengthen those of men around him.
Wanting Cato to take advantage of this, Cicero tries to add another dimension to Cato’s moral thinking, a dimension that other politicians are familiar with: influence. A student of rhetoric, Cato never ignored his potential to influence others, but he tended not to take advantage of it. His reputation never concerned him, and he despised the gifts of powerful men who sought his friendship. But using one’s influence does not always mean giving rousing speeches or befriending wealthy men. Young Cato didn’t make a speech against Pompaedius, nor did he even fight back. Remaining stone-faced and silent was enough to make Pompaedius afraid of the boy’s future influence.
What if Cato, by refusing the oath, could have convinced other senators to rebel? It’s unclear whether Caesar could have exiled all of them. But just as each car that drives on a dirt road makes the ruts harder for the next car to avoid, so too does each man who yields to Caesar make it harder for the next man to reject him. And considering how many senators have already decided to yield, even if Cato were to refuse the oath now, no other senator would have the guts to follow him. And once Cato accepts exile, he relinquishes his influence in Rome forever. Refusing the oath passes the right/wrong test, but it fails the influence test.
When Cato hears this from Cicero, he probably thinks back to his rejection of Pompey. Not long before the oath, Pompey offers that he and his son marry Cato’s daughters in an effort to ease the growing political tension between the two men. The daughters are delighted at the prospect, but Cato coldly rejects the offer, declaring himself “not assailable on the side of the women’s chamber” (719). Plutarch considers this to be Cato’s biggest mistake, because it pushes Pompey to marry into Caesar’s family instead, and it is their collusion that eventually costs Rome its republic. Being “too apprehensive of Pompey’s least faults,” Cato unwittingly brings about his greatest (720). To avoid making this error, Cato would have had to think beyond the level of right and wrong, taking into account how his choice would affect Pompey’s feelings, where he would turn if he was rejected, and the potential for a father-in-law to improve or deteriorate his character.
Rejecting Pompey is not wrong in itself, but it is wrong in context. Cato’s principles block his view of this context. Distant but serious dangers resulted from doing what was, on its face, the right thing. If Cato had been less virtuous and more diplomatic with Pompey, Rome would have been better off. Not only would Caesar have been without a powerful friend, but also Pompey could have become a better man under Cato’s guidance. Cato saw the marriage offer as Pompey trying to control him, but it was really Pompey asking to be his son. Though part of Pompey envied Cato’s virtue, part of him admired it too. He was ready to be lifted up, if only Cato would reach down to help him. But Cato was unwilling to lower himself to associate with, much less become family of, a vicious man. It is his refusal to “condescend,” as Cicero puts it, to the political world of favor and compromise, that hurts Rome most (728).
By taking the oath, he can prove he’s learned from his mistake with Pompey. This is because rejecting Pompey and rejecting the oath are two mistakes of a similar color. Both the marriage and the oath require Cato to associate with an enemy, to take into account the indirect consequences of his actions, and to tarnish his perfect virtue for the future good of Rome.
To do any good for Rome, Cato must live there, and to live there, he must take the oath. Thus we arrive at Cicero’s third argument. Even if taking the oath is wrong, abandoning the city is worse because it means forsaking all possibility of helping it in the future. It is not just the selfish, but also the easy path, to give up on his duty to the homeland. Doing good every day takes work; making one big display of virtue and then retiring to the countryside does not. Selfishness and laziness are not accusations that Cato takes lightly. One can imagine him turning red with shame as Cicero concludes, “though Cato have no need of Rome, yet Rome has need of Cato” (720-721).
To review, Cicero’s three arguments are these: 1) a private man should obey the public, 2) it’s too late for resistance to be meaningful, and 3) to refuse the oath is to abandon Rome. His first argument is weak, his second strong, and his third irrefutable.
After these three appeals to reason, the rhetorician concludes with an appeal to friendship. Cicero fears that without Cato in Rome to protect him, he and Cato’s other friends will be executed by Caesar’s regime. Accepting exile wouldn’t just mean abandoning Rome, but also all of his friends in it. Cato can sacrifice himself, but he has no right to sacrifice these men. As much as Cato takes the oath as a Roman, he also takes it as a friend. Because while he loves Rome as Rome, he also loves it as the city his friends live in, and this latter love is more visceral. All arguments seem frivolous in comparison with the imminent death of a loved one.
If Cato takes the oath more as a friend than as a citizen or a senator, it’s worth considering what kind of friend he is. Holding himself to a higher moral standard than he expects from anyone else, he is not the kind of friend to associate only with those who match his virtue. Those closest to him use fancy ointments, accept political gifts, and ride on horseback (which, as we know, is a sign of laziness). All he asks of his friends is that they do not force him to join them in vice. He doesn’t adorn their ointments, favor them with his policies, or even ride a horse alongside them, but he is their friend regardless. So while his friends might be cowards for taking Caesar’s oath, this is no excuse for Cato to forsake them.
Cato can love his friend despite the friend’s faults just like he can love his city despite the city’s. But once Caesar comes to power, Rome asks too much of Cato. In order to stay Rome’s friend—that is, its citizen—he must join it in doing wrong. Considering the question by himself, he decides he will not. But Cicero reminds him that Rome is not his only friend, and therefore not his only obligation. If Caesar’s demand permits him to break off his friendship with Rome, it does not permit him to do the same to the innocent people in it. If their own faults have never justified Cato abandoning his friends, why should Caesar’s?
But by taking the oath, Cato risks abandoning these Romans in a different sense. Right now, he is their “benefactor and their savior,” the city’s “only free and only undefeated man” (737). But if he takes every oath that Caesar gives him, he will be both defeated and unfree; Rome will be without a hero. Would it be better if Cato had lost his citizenship but never his virtue? We need not lose sleep over this question. Immediately after Cato takes the oath, he finds himself in a nearly identical situation: every other senator has submitted to Caesar’s newest demand and Cato is forced to follow. All of Cicero’s arguments apply here too. But rather than join the senators in submission, he cries out against tyranny, continuing his speech even as he is carried off to jail. Plutarch reveals his sense of humor by writing this story in the paragraph following Cicero’s remarks. The orator’s words have not made Cato meek.
We might be tempted to think that after taking the oath, Cato forgets Cicero’s arguments altogether. He eventually promises to abandon Rome, though it need him, because no matter which side wins the war, the commonwealth will fall into the hands of a tyrant. But if his commitment to Rome seems to have a limit, it is because Rome itself has one too. The republic gone and its people at war, the state to which Cato once devoted every act has been reduced to “ruin” (735). He is now a bee without a honeycomb.
But before he leaves Rome, his belief in the country reignites in the form of the Rome that survives: the 300. These men are mostly senators forced to flee from Caesar, and although they no longer possess political power, they represent the late republic and the type of person meant to uphold it. The same duty that Cato once had for his friends and Rome, he now has for these men. So when Caesar and his army approach the 300, Cato is in the same position he was in when he had to take the oath. The lives of men he cares about depend on his unwilling obedience to Caesar.
He takes the oath because Rome would be worse without him in it. This fact outweighed his desire to remain uncompelled. The same reasoning also seems to apply to the final showdown at Utica, but the two situations are not the same. It is the difference between obeying the tyrant as a land distributor and obeying the tyrant as a tyrant. Taking an oath for Caesar is not fatal to Cato’s virtue, but unequivocal surrender to him would be. He refuses to owe Caesar his life. More importantly, he refuses to give legitimacy to the man who upended the republic and split the country in two.
If he refuses to surrender, his other option is to fight. This is analogous to refusing the oath. He would lose the battle, but it would be better to die fighting for liberty than to live having renounced it. Consequences like death and exile, as we well know by now, do not concern Cato. But fighting Caesar would be worse than submitting to him. Caesar only has mercy on those who accept it, so if Cato dared to spit in Caesar’s face, it would not just mean Cato’s death, but also the death of his friends and family, the 300, and possibly all the men in Utica. Caesar would punish them all for the disobedience of their leader. This horrific hypothetical is unrelated to the narrow question of whether a virtuous man ought to obey or disobey a tyrant. Caesar’s potential cruelty, incidental to Cato’s decision, might not have concerned Cato if it hadn’t been for Cicero’s past arguments. But now he knows that his disobedience would make him responsible, however indirectly, for the death of all that remains of the republic. For Cato, no fate is worse than this.
Even if Cato somehow killed Caesar, it would not do much good. The real death of Rome has already transpired. This is why Cato rarely smiles towards the end of his life, and he never rejoices at a battle won. He does not see tyrants killing libertarians, or libertarians killing tyrants, but only Romans killing Romans. The only time he weeps in his life, besides for his brother’s death, is for the prospect of Utica’s demise, even though many of the Uticans are on Caesar’s side. It is so painful for him to see Rome torn apart that winning one more battle with Caesar would not be a victory for him; all it would mean is more “brave Romans murder[ing] one another” (730).
So when the 300 surrender, they are telling Cato something that he does not like but does understand: if they cannot have liberty, they will settle for peace. This group of men, the ghost of the Roman republic, has decided by vote that the country ought to be unified, even if it means accepting tyranny. The 300 should have taken up arms just as the senators should have refused the oath, but these men are “not Catos, and could not aspire to his greatness of mind,” and Cato is willing to accept that (734). He cannot agree with them but he cannot betray them either; he cannot surrender and he cannot fight back. His only choice is to die.
Cato and Caesar could never coexist in a unified Rome because Caesar will not compromise his power and Cato will not compromise his principles. Yes, taking the oath is a compromise, but not in the sense that a broken pillar compromises the integrity of a building. Rather, it is a compromise that clarifies his purpose. Caesar gives him a choice: be a good man and refuse the oath, or be a good citizen and take it. Taking the oath is Cato’s way of affirming that his good is none other than the good of his country.
But Cato does not want us to take his choice as a universal model. The Rome to which Cato binds himself and the Rome in which his son will grow up, are not the same. Because of Caesar, circumstances have changed. Thus, Cato forbids his son from entering into state affairs, “for to act therein as became him, was now impossible; and to do otherwise, would be dishonorable” (735). When a statesman is forced to take the proverbial oath for Caesar every day and on every issue, he must quit his office. If Cato suffered any defeat, it is this. Caesar has made it impossible for a good man to live a political life.
But a good man need not kill himself when his city turns bad. In his final days, Cato asks whether Statyllius, his imitator, is still resolved to be as steadfast, as just, and as great-souled as he. Learning that the young man is undeterred, Cato smiles. Statyllius, the subject of Plutarch’s final paragraph in Cato’s Life, is our reason for hope. Because although he tries to kill himself alongside Cato, his friends make sure that the young man lives. If a true philosopher lives in Rome, the city is not Caesar’s. In the 300 the republic lives on, and in Statyllius, so does Cato.
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Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, John Dryden Translation. Edited by Arthur Clough. 2010 Benediction Classics, Oxford
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