Charles Town & The American Revolution: Cato's Letters, Republicanism & Cato, the tragedy

Monday, March 25, 2019

Cato's Letters, Republicanism & Cato, the tragedy

Cato's Letters (John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon)

Vol. 1
Vol. 2
Vol. 3
Vol. 4

Republicanism in the U.S. (wiki)
Republicanism (wiki)
Cato's Letters (wiki)
Commonwealth Men (wiki)

Their criticism about enclosure and the general material plight of the poor were particularly notable to early twentieth-century scholars like Richard Tawney who saw in them a valuable though regrettably abortive form of Christian socialism that represented a preferable alternative to the view of Max Weber that Protestantism enabled and sustained the rise of capitalism.^{[citation needed]} On the other hand, it has been argued that the Commonwealth Men "by no means stand against an individualistic or capitalistic spirit, and--despite what [for example, historians JGA Pocock and Gordon Wood] have claimed--are far from espousing classical virtue or the Aristotelian conception of man as zoon politikon [a political animal]."

Since the 1979 publication of an article by G. R. Elton, the existence of a "commonwealth party" has been widely rejected as a largely romantic, sentimental construction, and its supposed "members" are unlikely to be classified even as a "movement" now, but reference to the "commonwealth men" or "commonwealthsmen" persists in scholarly literature.
Although nearly all British politicians and thinkers rejected the ideas of the commonwealth men in the eighteenth century, these writers had a powerful effect on British colonial America. It is estimated that half the private libraries in the American Colonies held bound volumes of Cato's Letters on their shelves.^[3] The Commonwealthman ideas of civic virtue, freedom, and government carefully regulated and controlled by the people were major principles in the republicanism that became the dominant ideology of the American Revolution and the new American nation

From Art. 5 Blog

Against the backdrop of an orchestrated South Sea Bubble, subsequent economic crash, and unpunished stock-jobbers, Cato interwove Lockean concepts regarding the laws of nature, civil society, and high crimes which were found some fifty and sixty years later in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

What follows are illustrative of the thought train of two foundational truths, from Locke to Cato to our Declaration of Independence, which culminated in the free government design of our Constitution.

The Purpose of Government.

John Locke: Civil Society comes into being when every individual has resigned up to the society or the public his individual power to exercise the law of nature and protect his life, liberty and estate.

Cato: That the benefit and safety of the people constitutes the supreme law is a universal and everlasting maxim in government. The sole reason for entering into society is mutual protection and defense.

Declaration: That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.

Constitution: We The People . . . in order to . . . provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare . . .

High Crimes.

John Locke: The chief end of men uniting into commonwealths, and of putting themselves under government is the preservation of society and every person in it. When high officials act contrary to their purposes, they are in a state of war with society. Should the institutions designed to punish evil-doers fail to do so, society has every right to strike down the usurpers and reform their government.
Who shall be the judge whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust?
To this Locke replied, The People shall be judge, for who shall be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him and must by having deputed him have still a power to discard him when he fails in his trust. If this be reasonable between particular cases of private men, it must be more so, of the greatest moment where the welfare of millions is concerned, and also where the evil, if not prevented, is greater and the redress very difficult, clear and dangerous.

Cato: Not by far was Cato the first to distinguish between crimes that are so by their nature, and those that violate positive statutory law. It is the duty of government to punish those offenses according to their best discretion, especially if the crimes are so great that no human wisdom could foresee that any man could be so wicked to commit them.

The great crimes to which Cato referred were those which could only be committed by those in positions of high political power; only they could ruin millions of lives without violating statutory law. For such men to go unpunished is to assert that the nation doesn’t have authority to save itself, that particular men have the liberty to subvert the society which protects them, and continue to be protected by that government which they would destroy.

Declaration: George III committed dozens of high crimes against his North American subjects and their civil society. His history was one of “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.” Being incapable of removing George III from office, American colonials fired their king.

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Mises.org on Cato's Letters

It is worth revisiting Cato's Letters' devotion to liberty, its central theme, which so powerfully influenced our founding as a nation. Consider some of its memorable insights (in the order of their appearance):

...general liberty...is certainly the right of all mankind...
...brand those as enemies to human society, who are enemies to equal and impartial liberty.
Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together.
The defense of liberty is a noble, a heavenly office...
Few men have been desperate enough to attack openly, and barefaced, the liberties of a free people...Even when the enterprise is begun and visible, the end must be hid, or denied.
...the people would constantly be in the interests of truth and liberty, were it not for external delusion and external force.
...government executed for the good of all, and with the consent of all, is liberty; and the word government is profaned, and its meaning abused, when it signifies anything else.
...the inestimable blessing of liberty. Can we ever over-rate it... It is the parent of virtue, pleasure, plenty, and security...
In all contentions between liberty and power, the latter has almost always been the aggressor.
...I know not what treason is, if sapping and betraying the liberties of a people be not treason...
The people's jealousy tends to preserve liberty; and the prince's to destroy it.
Now, because liberty chastises and shortens power, therefore power would extinguish liberty; and consequently liberty has...cause to be exceeding jealous, and always upon her defense.
...with the loss of liberty, shame and honor are lost.
In most parts of the earth there is neither light nor liberty..there being, in all places, many engaged, through interest, in a perpetual conspiracy against them.
Wherever truth is dangerous, liberty is precarious.
Only government founded upon liberty is a public blessing; without liberty, it is a public curse...
...no nation ever lost its liberty, but by the force of foreign invaders, or the domestic treachery of its own magistrates
...with liberty light has sprung in...We have learned that we are as fit to use our own understandings, as they are whose understandings are no better than ours...
...all mankind will allow it a less crime in any man to attempt to recover his own liberty, then wantonly and cruelly to destroy the liberty of his country.
...liberty is the unalienable right of all mankind. All governments, under whatsoever form they are administered, ought to be administered for the good of the society; when they are otherwise administered, they cease to be government, and become usurpations.
All men are born free; liberty is a gift which they receive from God himself...
...the nature of government does not alter the natural right of men to liberty, which is in all political societies their due.
By liberty, I understand the power which every man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruits of his labor, art and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, by taking from any member, or 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 arbiter of his own private actions and property...no man living can divest him but by usurpation, or by his own consent.
True and impartial liberty is therefore the right of every man to pursue the natural, reasonable, and religious dictates of his own mind; to think what he will, to act as he thinks, provided he acts not to the prejudice of another; to spend his own money himself, and lay out the produce of his labor his own way; and to labor for his own pleasure and profits, and not for others who are idle, and would live...by pillaging and oppressing him, and those that are like him...
Free government is the protecting of the people in their liberties by stated rules: Tyranny is a brutish struggle for unlimited liberty to one or a few, who would rob all the others of their liberty, and act by no rule but lawless lust.
The love of liberty is an appetite so strongly implanted in the nature of all living creatures, that even the appetite of self-preservation...seems to be contained in it; since by liberty they enjoy the means of preserving themselves, and of satisfying their desires in the manner which they themselves choose and like best.
Where liberty is lost, life grows precarious, always miserable, often intolerable. Liberty is to live upon one's own terms; slavery is to live at the mercy of another...
This passion for liberty in men, and their possession of it, is of that efficacy and importance, that it seems the parent of all the virtues...
Indeed liberty is the divine source of all human happiness...The privileges of thinking, saying and doing what we please, and of growing rich as we can, without any other restriction than that by all this we hurt not the public, nor one another, are the glorious privileges of liberty; and its effects, to live in freedom, plenty, and safety.
...all civil happiness and prosperity is inseparable from liberty...
Now the laws which encourage and increase virtue are the fixed laws of general and impartial liberty...Where liberty is thoroughly established, and its laws equally executed, every man will find his own account in doing as he would be done unto, and no man will take from another what he would not part with himself...The property of the poor will be as sacred as the privileges of the prince, and the law will be the only bulwark of both. Every man's honest industry and useful talents, while they are employed for the public, will be employed for himself; and while he serves himself, he will serve the public...
...the entering into society, and becoming subject to the government, is only the parting with natural liberty, in some instances, to be protected in the enjoyment of it in others.
Where there is liberty, there are encouragements to labor, because people labor for themselves, and no one can take from them the acquisitions which they make by their labor...
To live securely, happily, and independently, is the end and effect of liberty...Nor did ever any man that could live satisfactorily without a master desire to live under one...
...all the advantages of liberty must be lost with liberty, and all the evils of tyranny must accompany tyranny.
...liberty: You are our Alpha and Omega, our first and last resource; and when your virtue is gone, all is gone.
You are born to liberty, and it is in your interest and duty to preserve it...your governors have every right to protect and defend you, none to injure and oppress you.
...make good use of this present dawn, this precious day of liberty...if you suffer it to be lost, will probably be forever lost.
Nothing is too hard for liberty...
This therefore is the worst of all prostitutions and most immoral of all sort of slavery...supporting servitude with the breath of liberty, and assaulting and mangling liberty with her own weapons.
...liberty and tyranny... concerns the whole earth...Why should not the knowledge and love of God be joined to the knowledge and love of liberty, his best gift, which is the certain source of all the civil blessings of this life?
Liberty is salvation in politics...We, who enjoy the precious, lovely, and invaluable blessing of liberty, know that nothing can be paid too dear to purchase and preserve it.
Without a doubt, every man has a right to liberty...
A free trade, a free government, and a free liberty of conscience, are the rights and the blessings of mankind.
It is madness in extremity, to hope that a government founded upon liberty...can be supported by other principles; and whoever would maintain it by contrary ones intends to blow it up, let him allege what he will.
...a power inconsistent with liberty...will never be asked with an intention to make no use of it.
...when a government is founded upon liberty and equal laws, it is ridiculous for those in the administration to have any hopes of preserving themselves long there, but by just actions...
Thus it is that liberty is almost everywhere lost: Her foes are artful, united and diligent: Her defenders are few, disunited, and inactive.
Truth has so many advantages above error, that she wants only to be shown...she breaks the bonds of tyranny and fraud...I would not destroy this liberty by methods which will inevitably destroy all liberty.
The cause of liberty, and the good of the whole, ought to prevail...This truth every man acknowledges, when it becomes his own case...
...liberty...the people's zeal to preserve it has ever been called ingratitude by such as had designs against it...
You are born, Gentlemen, to liberty; and from it you derive all the blessings which you possess.
...civil governments were instituted by men, and for the sake of men...men have a right to expect from them protection and liberty, and to oppose rapine and tyranny wherever they are exercised...

On the subject of property, the Letters are equally eloquent:

...the security of property and the freedom of speech always go together...where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything else his own.
The people...the security of their persons and property is their highest aim...The same can rarely be said of great men, who, to gratify private passion, often bring down public ruin; who, to fill their private purses with many thousands, frequently load the people with many millions...
...men have been knocked down for saying that they had a right to defend their property by force, when a tyrant attempted to rob them of it against law.
...property, the preservation of which is the principal business of government...
The truth is; if the people are suffered to keep their own, it is the most that they desire: But even this is a happiness which in few places falls to their lot; they are frequently robbed by those whom they pay to protect them...
...every man has a right and a call to provide for himself, to attend upon his own affairs, and to study his own happiness.
As the preservation of property is the source of national happiness; whoever violates property, or lessens or endangers it...he is an enemy to his country...
When a magistrate fancies he is not made for the people, but the people for him; that he does not govern for them, but for himself...the magistrate gives the name of sedition and rebellion to whatsoever they do for the preservation of themselves and their own rights.
Every plowman knows a good government from a bad one, from the effects of it; he knows whether the fruits of his labor be his own, and whether he enjoy them in peace and security.
...one man is only safe, while it is in the interest of another to let him alone...
The two great laws of human society, from whence all the rest derive their course and obligation, are those of equity and self-preservation: By the first all men are bound alike not to hurt one another; by the second all men have a right alike to defend themselves.
Government therefore can have no power, but such as men can give...no man can give to another what is none of his own...
Nor has any man in the state of nature power...to take away the life of another, unless to defend his own, or what is as much his own, namely, his property. This power therefore, which no man has, no man can transfer to another.
Nor could any man in the state of nature have a right to violate the property of another...as long as he himself was not injured by that industry and those enjoyments. No man therefore could transfer to the magistrate that right which he had not himself.
No man in his senses was ever so wild as to give an unlimited power to another to take away his life, or the means of living...But if any man restrained himself from any part of his pleasures, or parted with any portion of his acquisitions, he did it with the honest purpose of enjoying the rest with greater security, and always in subservience to his own happiness, which no man will or can willingly and intentionally give away to any other whatsoever.
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 arbiter of his own private actions and property. A character of which no man living can divest him but by usurpation, or by his own consent.
It is a mistaken notion of government, that the interest of the majority is only to be consulted...otherwise the greater number may sell the lesser, and divide their estates among themselves; and so, instead of a society, where all peaceable men are protected, become a conspiracy of the many against the minority...
Every man is in nature and reason the judge and disposer of his own domestic affairs...Government being intended to protect men from the injuries of one another, and not to direct them in their own affairs...
Let people alone, and they will take care of themselves, and do it best; and if they do not, a sufficient punishment will follow their neglect, without the magistrate's interposition and penalties...
True and impartial liberty is therefore the right of every man to pursue the natural, reasonable, and religious dictates of his own mind; to think what he will, to act as he thinks, provided he acts not to the prejudice of another; to spend his own money himself, and lay out the produce of his labor his own way; and to labor for his own pleasure and profits, and not for others who are idle, and would live...by pillaging and oppressing him, and those that are like him.
Indeed liberty is the divine source of all human happiness. To possess, in security, the effects of our industry, is the most powerful and reasonable incitement to be industrious: And to be able to provide for our children, and to leave them all that we have, is the best motive to beget them. But where property is precarious, labor will languish. The privileges of thinking, saying and doing what we please, and of growing rich as we can, without any other restriction, than that by all this we hurt not the public, nor one another, are the glorious privileges of liberty; and its effects, to live in freedom, plenty, and safety.
Now the laws which encourage and increase virtue are the fixed laws of general and impartial liberty; laws, which being the rule of every man's actions, and the measures of every man's power, make honesty and equity their interest. Where liberty is thoroughly established, and its laws equally executed, every man will find his own account in doing as he would be done unto, and no man will take from another what he would not part with himself: Honor and advantage will follow the upright, punishment overtake the oppressor. The property of the poor will be as sacred as the privileges of the prince, and the law will be the only bulwark of both. Every man's honest industry and useful talents, while they are employed for the public, will be employed for himself; and while he serves himself, he will serve the public...
Force is often dangerous; and when employed to acquire what is not ours, it is always unjust; and therefore men, to procure from others what they had not before, must gain their consent...
Where there is liberty, there are encouragements to labor, because people labor for themselves, and no one can take from them the acquisitions which they make by their labor...
To live securely, happily, and independently, is the end and effect of liberty...Nor did every any man that could live satisfactorily without a master desire to live under one...all men are animated by the passion of acquiring and defending property, because property is the best support of that independency...as happiness is the effect of independency, and independency the effect of property; so certain property is the effect of liberty alone, and can only be secured by the laws of liberty; laws which are made by consent, and cannot be repealed without it.
All these blessings, therefore, are only the gifts and consequences of liberty, and only to be found in free countries, where power is fixed on one side, and property secured on the other; where one cannot break bounds without check, penalties or forfeiture, nor the other suffer diminution without redress...
...chose whether you will be freemen or vassals; whether you will spend your own money and estates, or let others worse than you spend them for you: Methinks the choice should be easy.
...while men are men, ambition, avarice, and vanity, and other passions, will govern their actions; in spite of all equity and reason, they will be ever usurping, or attempting to usurp, upon the liberty and fortunes of one another, and all men will be striving to enlarge their own. Dominion will always desire increase, and property always to preserve itself; and these opposite views and interests will be causing a perpetual struggle: But by this struggle liberty is preserved...
This is not a dispute about dreams or speculations, which affect not your property; but it is a dispute whether you shall have any property, which these wretches throw away...
Would you allow the common laws of neighborhood to such as steal or plunder your goods, rob you of your money, seize your houses, drive you from your possessions, enslave your persons, and starve your families? No, sure, you would not.
...[pretending concern for the public good] will appear only to be a project for picking pockets, and getting away other people's money; which, in reality, at present makes, and ever did make, most of the squabbles which at any time have disturbed the world.
...government is only the union of many individuals for their common defense...
...to prevent the unfair gains and depredations of one another; which is indeed the business of the government; viz. to secure to every one his own...
A free trade, a free government, and a free liberty of conscience, are the rights and the blessings of mankind.
The first care which wise governors will always take is...to secure to them the possession of their property, upon which everything else depends.
...the product of the whole people's labor and sustenance is not suffered to be devoured by a few...
...political power...This is the greatest trust that can be committed by men to one another; and contains in it all that is valuable here on earth, the lives, the properties, the liberties, of your countrymen...This great trust, Gentlemen, is not committed to you for your own sakes, but for the protection, security and happiness of those whom you represent.

Cato's Letters, widely echoed by our founding fathers, was a central inspiration behind what became America, and a light of liberty to the rest of the world. As we pass the anniversary of its first appearance, it merits revisiting that commitment to liberty which we are all now beneficiaries of, and asking ourselves whether we, or our government, are still as committed to liberty.

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Cato, the tragedy (wiki)

Cato, the play, w/selected essays at online library of liberty

Joseph Addison’s Cato, A Tragedy captured the imaginations of eighteenth-century theatergoers throughout Great Britain, North America, and much of Europe. From its original performance on April 14, 1713, the play was a resounding success. Embraced by an audience whose opinions spanned the political spectrum, Cato was a popular and critical triumph that had tremendous appeal both as a performance and as a published text. In the second half of 1713, the play was staged more than twenty times in London alone, and before the century’s end, twenty-six English editions of Addison’s tragedy had appeared. Cato’s popularity continued to spread throughout the eighteenth century, and the play appeared in performance and published translation in countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Holland, and Poland. With its themes of liberty, virtue, and resistance to tyranny, Addison’s Cato inserted itself into eighteenth-century consciousness, providing many of the words and images that informed republican sensibilities during this period in Britain, Europe, and the British colonies in North America. . . .

Addison was born [in 1672] into a world that had recently witnessed the tumult of the English Civil War and the beheading of Charles I, followed by Cromwell’s Puritan commonwealth. Britain’s political instability continued in Addison’s early life, with the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which another king—James II—was forced by Parliament to flee the country. The mature Addison’s writing career spanned the period of British history marked by the conclusion of Queen Anne’s reign in 1714 and the inauguration of the Hanoverian succession. This was a time of political upheaval and uncertainty, filled with resistance and uprisings by Jacobites who retained loyalty to the Stuart family line. Disturbances of this nature were a challenge to the very legitimacy of the Hanoverian succession. These years were characterized by intense factional conflict between Whigs and Tories over political control, with 1710–14 being the final years of Tory control before the extended period of Whig dominance that began with the accession of George I to the throne in 1714. Addison himself was politically associated with the Whigs, yet Cato is remarkable for the manner in which both Whigs and Tories embraced it as sympathetic to their causes; leaders of both parties were present at the opening performance, and Alexander Pope’s account of the premiere describes Whigs and Tories competing to appropriate the play to their own causes. During the first performance, Whigs loudly applauded each mention of “liberty,” and between acts, the Tory Bolingbroke publicly gave Barton Booth—the actor who played Cato—fifty guineas, for defending the cause of liberty against a perpetual dictator. That Addison himself wanted the message of the play to transcend party politics can be seen in his commissioning a Tory, Pope, to write the play’s Prologue and a Whig, Sir Samuel Garth, to compose the Epilogue.

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. . . Frederick, Prince of Wales put on a production at Leicester House on 4 January 1749 to promote his own support for English liberty against the supposed tyranny of his father George II of Great Britain. The cast featured four of Frederick's children, including the future George III, who spoke a specially-written prologue - this included the line "What, tho' a boy? it may with pride be said / A boy in England born, in England bred" to contrast to George II's German birthplace

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. . . Ordinary people knew about ancient Rome, too, not from books but from an enormously popular play by Joseph Addison, Cato. Though the seventeenth-century Puritanical prejudice against stage productions still lingered in parts of New England, eighteenth-century Americans elsewhere were avid playgoers, and Cato was by far their favorite play. It was first performed and published in London in 1713. It was soon republished in Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, Göttingen, Paris, and Rome; at least eight editions were published in the British-American colonies by the end of the century. The play was also performed all over the colonies, in countless productions from the 1730s until after the American Revolution.
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. . . At first blush, Cato would scarcely seem to offer much consolation to Americans in their efforts to establish a durable republic. The story recounts Cato’s noble but vain efforts to save the remnants of the Roman republican Senate from the usurping arms of the all-conquering Caesar, “who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin.” In the end, Cato commits suicide, and the republic perishes as well.

Yet one of the subplots of the drama offered a ray of hope, at least for the more sanguine of the founders, for it provided a means of escaping a dilemma. Both classical and modern theorists of republics held that their actuating principle was public virtue—virtue in the sense of selfless, full-time, manly devotion to the public weal. Many Americans had been governed by such public spiritedness during the war and made great sacrifices for the cause of independence, but in normal times people were too individualistic and too avaricious to sustain that level of commitment. Besides, Americans believed in original sin, which in eighteenth-century terms meant that they believed men were driven by their “passions”—drives for selfgratification—and that the “ruling” passions of most public men were ambition and avarice, the love of power and the love of money.

One of the characters in Cato provides a way around that human frailty. Juba, a young Numidian in Cato’s camp (who incidentally was the character with whom Washington identified in his early letter), is concerned that he may have incurred Cato’s displeasure by being preoccupied with his love of Cato’s daughter at such an inappropriate time. He says, “I’d rather have that man approve my deeds, than worlds for my admirers.” Just before, he had recited what were famous lines about honor, “the noble mind’s distinguishing perfection / that aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her, / and imitates her actions, where she is not.” Honor in these verses is a substitute for virtue: a preoccupation with earning “the esteem of wise and good men.” Addison thought the point so important that he wrote an essay in The Guardian explaining and elaborating it. Genuine virtue, he declared, was exceedingly rare, but all could aspire to honor. To put it differently, Addison, through Juba, advises people to follow the opposite course from what Shakespeare’s Polonius recommends in Hamlet. Polonius says to his son Laertes, “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Shakespeare put the words in the mouth of a prattling fool, and Addison tells us that they are indeed foolish words. Rather, he says, be true to the wise and the virtuous, and then thou cannot be false to thyself.

In his public life, Washington followed Addison’s advice, and so did Hamilton, and so did a host of other founders; and in the doing they overcame their private shortcomings and behaved virtuously enough in public to establish a regime of liberty that would perdure.

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Cato, A Tragedy

Addison’s Cato, A Tragedy is based on the final days of Cato the Younger (95–46 b.c.), also known as Cato of Utica. Cato the Younger was one member of a patrician family who were historically strong supporters of Roman republicanism and traditions. Most noteworthy among his ancestors was his great-grandfather, Cato the Elder or Cato the Censor (234–149 b.c.), famous for his oft-repeated refrain of “Carthago delenda est” (“Carthage must be destroyed”) and for upholding a simple life of agrarian virtue. Like his great-grandfather, Cato the Younger epitomized a commitment both to liberty and to the republic, and he came to exemplify virtue in late Roman republican politics.

Cato’s reputation for stern virtue and unwavering principle was widely known. “It is said of Cato,” wrote Plutarch in his Life of Cato the Younger, “that even from his infancy, in his speech, his countenance, and all his childish pastimes, he discovered an inflexible temper, unmoved by any passion, and firm in everything . . . to go through with what he undertook.” The mature Cato was also known for his austerity in personal habits, eating simply and frequently refusing to wear a tunic under his toga or to wear shoes. He was widely regarded as the embodiment of the Stoic virtues of self-control and stern discipline, as well as an inflexible adherent to principles of justice. According to Sallust, Cato “preferred to be, rather than to seem, virtuous; hence, the less he sought fame, the more it pursued him” (The War with Catiline, LIV.6).

Cato’s concern for Roman liberty led him to oppose Pompey when he feared Pompey’s power had grown too great, then to join with Pompey against Julius Caesar once he began to appreciate the threat to Roman liberty that Caesar represented. A leading figure in the Senate, Cato was a member of the Optimates, a political faction that sought to maintain the traditional authority of the Senate within the republic as a protection against the dangers of both mob rule and the tyranny of a single individual. The Optimates stood in opposition to the Populares, who advocated political and economic reform by means of land redistribution. Caesar had embraced the Populares’ political agenda early in his career, but it was through his military success and his ability to command his troops’ continued loyalty that his political power truly grew. Prior to outbreak of the civil war that would eventually end the republic, a triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus shared power. With the death of Crassus, though, that alliance crumbled.

Caesar’s legions crossed the Rubicon to take control of Rome, while Pompey withdrew from Italy—Senate in tow—to Greece and to the fateful meeting at Pharsalus. The political struggle between Cato and Caesar was a contest between widely divergent characters. Political restraint versus political ambition was but one facet of the conflict between these great Roman figures that was personal, intense, and well known at the time.

Each represented a different response to the crisis of the Roman republic, and the tension in the Roman spirit can be seen in the comparison between them. Sallust’s The War with Catiline offers an extended discussion of their characters. According to Sallust, “They had the same nobility of soul, and equal, though quite different, reputations. Caesar was esteemed for the many kind services he rendered and for his lavish generosity; Cato for the consistent uprightness of his life. The former was renowned for his humanity and mercy; the latter had earned respect by his strict austerity. Caesar won fame by his readiness to give, to relieve, to pardon; Cato, by never offering presents. The one was a refuge for the unfortunate, and was praised for his good nature; the other was a scourge for the wicked, admired for his firmness” (Book VI). Cato stood for preserving republican virtue, tradition, and precedent; for respecting established institutions and the Senate in particular; and for his unwavering adherence to principle. By contrast, Caesar represented energy, innovation, and a willingness to break with precedent in his pursuit of advantage, territorial gains, and personal aggrandizement. If Cato embodied the austere simplicity and the moral conscience of republican Rome, Caesar personified the lavish grandiosity which came to characterize the Empire.

One example of the contrast between Cato’s severity, austerity, and self-restraint and Caesar’s humanity, mercy, and generosity was the Catilinarian conspiracy. There, Cato insisted on the conspirators’ swift execution, while Caesar pled for leniency and called for their imprisonment rather than their death. Cato argued that the conspirators should be treated as if they had been caught in the act; moreover, since they planned to show no mercy to Rome, they should be shown none by Rome. Cato’s oratory carried the day in the Senate, which had initially been swayed by Caesar’s entreaties. In Act IV, scene 4, Addison echoes Sallust’s characterization when Lucius tells Cato that “the virtues of humanity are Caesar’s” and Cato responds that “such popular humanity is treason” and that Caesar’s virtues have undone Rome. One aspect of Caesar’s humanity was his well-known policy of offering clemency to his defeated enemies, and it is likely that he would have extended clemency to Cato as well. Describing a military dictator as possessing the virtues of humanity may strike the modern reader as somewhat surprising and might have struck eighteenth-century theatergoers as such, too. Audiences in the eighteenth century, however, would have appreciated that the popular, humane figure could be the greatest threat to liberty and that an unbendingly virtuous character such as Cato—willing to sacrifice his own life to freedom’s cause—could be liberty’s greatest defender.

No discussion of Cato would be complete without some consideration of his relationship to Stoicism, since both to Romans and in an abstract sense, Cato exemplified the life led in accordance with Stoic ideals. Identifying the virtuous life with happiness, Stoicism emphasized the importance of self-command as a means of placing an individual beyond the reaches of the whims of fortune. Stoics believed that self-mastery and therefore true freedom could be attained only by putting aside passion, unjust thoughts, and indulgence and by fulfilling one’s duty for the right reasons. Cato’s unwavering commitment to his principles and his willingness to apply his standards of judgment to others led many Romans to admire his philosophic commitment, including Cicero, whose De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the Ends of Good and Evil) casts Cato as the spokesman for Stoicism. Given the deep intermingling of morality and politics in the Roman republic, it is not entirely surprising that much of Cato’s political standing in the Senate and his place in public opinion was due to his fellow Romans’ appreciation of his moral character. This is not to suggest, however, that Cato was above criticism. There were many—including some of his political allies—who disapproved of Cato’s inflexibility and his

Charles Town & The American Revolution

Monday, March 25, 2019

Cato's Letters, Republicanism & Cato, the tragedy

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