Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/252

240 he tlius religiously devoted himself, it may be allowed that the example of the great censor did actually raise and maintain a higher spirit of public morality among his con temporaries, and gave encouragement and strength to many struggling consciences even in later generations. From the date of his censorship (184) to his death in 1 49, Cato held no public office at home or abroad ; but continued to the last to distinguish himself in the senate as the persistent opponent of the new ideas and the men who supported them. He was struck with horror, along with many other Romans of the graver stamp, at the licence of the Bacchanalian mysteries (181), which he attributed to the fatal influence of Grecian manners ; and he vehemently urged the dismissal of the sophists who came as ambassadors from Athens. It was not till his eightieth year that he consented to learn even the rudiments of the Greek language. His speeches, of which as many as 150 were collected, were principally directed against the young free-thinking and loose-principled nobles of the day. It is hard to say, was the remark of Livy, whether he attacked them most or they him ; for they too did not fail to retaliate, and when he was required to defend himself in his eighty-first year against a capital charge, he was heard to complain of having to plead his cause before men of other minds and of another generation. Almost his last public act was to urge his countrymen to the third Punic war and the destruction of Carthage. Home, he constantly declared, could never be safe while so great a city lay so near her ; and he plucked, on one occasion, from under his robe the fresh figs which, he said, had been gathered but three days before on the coast which fronted the mouth of the Tiber, exclaiming again and again &quot;Delenda est Carthago!&quot; The great principle of Cato s life was to do everything by rule. With him the individual life was a continual disci pline, and public life was the discipline of the many. He regarded the individual householder as the germ of the family, the family as the germ of the state. All his actions were measured, and every one assigned to its proper place and hour ; he was a great economist of his time, and thereby enabled himself to get through a great variety of vork, though it all lay within narrow limits. He exacted similar application from his dependents, and proved himself a hard husband, a strict father, a severe and cruel master. There was little difference, apparently, in the esteem in which he held his wife and his slaves ; his pride alone induced him to take a deeper interest and indulge a warmer feeling in regard to his sons. It may be remarked, however, that among the Romans themselves there was little in this behaviour which seemed worthy of censure ; it was respected rather as a traditional example of the old Roman manners. In the remarkable passage in which Livy describes the character of Cato (Hist., xxxix. 40), there is no word of blame for the rigid discipline of his household. During the course of his long and industrious life, Cato contributed to the formation of the Latin language by at least two important works, the treatise De Re Rustica, which is supposed to be at least substantially his own, and the Origines, of which last only fragments remain. The one is a miscellaneous collection of rules of good husbandry, conveying much curious information on the domestic habits of the Romans of his age, the other seems to have been a more methodical compilation of Roman history from the foundation of the city to his own time. The fragments which remain of it furnish us with information which is often interesting, but sometimes perplexing, and it is obser/ed that Livy seems to have made no use of the work of which he could not have been ignorant. Of the numerous speeches of Cato but few passages have been pre served. His collection of Apophthpymita he was himself curt, caustic, and sententious in conversation is wholly lost. We possess the life of Cato as written by Cornelius Nepos, Plutarch, and Aurelius Victor. Many particulars of his career and character are to be gathered from Livy and Cicero.  CATO, (commonly distinguished from his great-grandfather, Cato the Censor, by the title of Uticensis, from the place of his death and the renown attending upon it),- furnishes a remarkable specimen of the effect of Hellenic training upon the hard and narrow but determined spirit of the old Latin race. While he inherited from his illustrious ancestor, and from the general discipline of his family through many generations, a sour and severe temper, a pedantic adherence to form and usage, and an utter lack of sympathy with any temper or habits alien from his own, his feelings had been deepened, if not expanded, by the study of the Greek philosophy. As a devoted follower of the Stoic teaching he had attained to very lofty principles, and made them, with almost undeviating consistency, the nils of his life and conduct. He became a fanatic in tho pursuit of holiness and pureness of living, in the highest sense in which such graces could be acquired by a pagan, with a view to himself and his own perfection only, but with no love of man and no faith in Providence. He waged a brave but hopeless war against the evil tendencies of his age ; but he attached to himself no party, gave strength to no cause, effected no good in his generation, and at the last critical moment betrayed his trust to humanity by fleeing from immediate evil by an unreflecting suicide. But his aims were, for the times in which he lived, generous and noble, and his career well deserves to be studied by succeeding generations. It is only in a very slight outline that it can be here presented. Cato was born in the year 95 B.C., and on the death of his parents was brought up iu the house of his uncle, Livius Drusus, who was just then beginning to incite the Italians to claim a share in the Roman franchise and its privileges. This was the commencement of the intestine troubles of the Republic, and the whole of Cato s after-life was passed amidst domestic dissensions and civil wars. In his early years he expressed with striking boldness his dis gust at the cruelties of Sulla. The priesthood of Apollo, to which he early consecrated himself, commended him to a life of rigid observances, and gave a great impulse to his fervid imagination. He learned the principles of the Stoics under a Greek teacher named Antipater, but his oratory in the Forum represented only the harsh, vehement, and caustic type of his Roman countrymen. After fighting in the ranks against Spartacus he became a military tribune, 67 B.C., and served a campaign in Macedonia. On his return he obtained the quaestorship, and distinguished himself for his zeal and integrity in the management of the public accounts, which recommended him for a provincial appointment in Asia. Again he acquitted him self with marked disinterestedness, and conceived a disgust equal to that of his great ancestor at the corruption of the public men with whom he came in contact. He saw, however, much to admire in the discipline which Lucullus had enforced in his own Eastern command, and he supported his claims to a triumph, while he opposed the inordinate pretensions of Pompeius. When the favour of the nobles gained him the tribuneship he exerted himself to convict Murena, one of their chief men, of bribery. Cicero, more pliant than himself, defended the culprit and obtained his acquittal ; but Cioero was glad to avail himself of the firmness and stern justice of his recent adversary, when he urged the execution of Catilina s associates. By this time Cato had become a great power in the state. Though possessed of littls wealth and no family influence, his 