Background
Cato the Younger was born in 95 BC in Rome. He was an orphaned when a child and raised in the house of his uncle M. Livius Drusus.
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Cato's Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects : Four Volumes in Two
( Almost a generation before Washington, Henry, and Jeffe...)
Almost a generation before Washington, Henry, and Jefferson were even born, two Englishmen, concealing their identities with the honored ancient name of Cato, wrote newspaper articles condemning tyranny and advancing principles of liberty that immensely influenced American colonists. The Englishmen were John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Their prototype was Cato the Younger (9546 B.C.), the implacable foe of Julius Caesar and a champion of liberty and republican principles. Their 144 essays were published from 1720 to 1723, originally in the London Journal, later in the British Journal. Subsequently collected as Cato's Letters, these "Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious" became, as Clinton Rossiter has remarked, "the most popular, quotable, esteemed source of political ideas in the colonial period." This new two-volume edition offers minimally modernized versions of the letters from the four-volume sixth edition printed in London in 1755. Ronald Hamowy is Professor of History at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.
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Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis
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also known as
Cato the Younger
Career
After serving as military tribune in Macedonia (67-66 B. C. ), he toured Asia to prepare himself for public life. As quaestor, or minister of finance, Cato was notable for his punishment of corrupt treasury clerks and the strict rectitude of his accounts. But he was not free of favoritism. As tribune elect in 63, he prosecuted for electoral bribery one of the men who defeated Catiline for the consulship, exempting the other because he was a relative. Cato's fiery speech on December 5 led the Senate to vote for the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators who had been caught in Rome after an unsuccessful attempt at seizing control of the state. As tribune in 62, Cato blocked attempts by Metellus Nepos and Julius Caesar to recall Pompey to deal with Catiline and his army in Etruria. When Pompey returned from the East, Cato led the senatorial opposition against him. He also outraged Crassus and the equestrians by refusing to allow reconsideration of the tax contract for Asia. The result was the formation of the First Triumvirate by Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar to attain their political ends. During Caesar's consulship in 59 Cato bitterly opposed the triumvirate's bills for the redistribution of land and the grant of an extraordinary command to Caesar. So violent were Cato's tactics that Caesar at one point had him imprisoned only to think better of it later. In the following year the triumvirs rid themselves of Cato by offering him a special command in Cyprus. Though Cato was aware he was being removed from the center of power, his exaggerated sense of duty made it impossible for him to refuse. When he returned to Rome in 56 B. C. , he attempted to block the election of Pompey and Crassus to their second consulship. They therefore prevented Cato's election to the praetorship, for which he had to wait until 54. To check the rioting and anarchy which developed in 53 and 52, Cato supported the proposal of the senatorial leaders to make Pompey sole consul. Thereafter he continued to back Pompey but only as a counterforce to the growing power of Caesar. Because Cato refused to cultivate the great politicians, he failed to win the consulship for 51. In the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, Cato chose Pompey and was given command in Sicily, which he evacuated after the arrival of the Caesarian forces in order to avoid bloodshed. He garrisoned Dyrrachium for Pompey during the Battle of Pharsalus and after Pompey's defeat joined the Pompeian refugees in Africa. There he refused military command because he had not held the consulship but took charge of the city of Utica (whence he derived his surname) and organized its defenses. When Caesar crushed the Pompeians in the Battle of Thapsus in 46 and approached the city, Cato committed suicide.
Achievements
Works
book
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Cato's Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects : Four Volumes in Two
( Almost a generation before Washington, Henry, and Jeffe...)
-
Cato's Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects : Four Volumes in Two
Views
Quotations:
"Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing Freedom of Speech. .. Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech. .. "
"Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government--a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave. To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed. "
"By Liberty I understand the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The Fruits of a Man's honest Industry are the just Rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbitrer of his own private Actions and Property. "
"I know not what treason is, if sapping and betraying the liberties of a people be not treason. .. "
"The cabbage surpasses all other vegetables. If, at a banquet, you wish to dine a lot and enjoy your dinner, then eat as much cabbage as you wish, seasoned with vinegar, before dinner, and likewise after dinner eat some half-dozen leaves. It will make you feel as if you had not eaten, and you can drink as much as you like. "
"Bitter are the roots of study, but how sweet their fruit. "
"Consider in silence whatever any one says: speech both conceals and reveals the inner soul of man. "
"Blessed be they as virtuous, who when they feel their virile members swollen with lust, visit a brothel rather than grind at some husband's private mill. "
"I will begin to speak, when I have that to say which had not better be unsaid. "
"Regard not dreams, since they are but the images of our hopes and fears. "
"For some people there is no comfort without pain. Thus; we define salvation through suffering. Hence, why we choose people who we know aren't right for ourselves. "
Personality
Cato early cultivated habits of austerity and made a great show of political and moral probity.
