Cato the Younger in the Enlightenment

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“If I had only been born a Roman!” sighed Jean-Jacques Rousseau aftertouring the Pont du Gard.1 This was a typically emotional reaction onRousseau’s part, but for once he was perfectly in tune with his times.Roman history was familiar to every educated person in the eighteenthcentury and supplied a vocabulary of terms and examples used fordiscussions of practically any concept, not least politics and states-manship.2 Prominent among the historical personages who figured inthis discourse was Marcus Porcius Cato (95–46 BCE), also called CatoUticensis or Cato the Younger.3 In his time, Cato was famous as thequintessential republican, exhibiting stoic virtue in private and publicand leading the increasingly desperate struggle to save the republicfrom Julius Caesar. On occasion he behaved quite oddly: for example,when he divorced his wife Marcia so that his ally Hortensius couldmarry her (after the latter’s death, Cato remarried her). Following a notparticularly successful political and military career, he decided to re-tire but found himself unable to abstain from joining his former oppo-nent Pompey in the civil war against Caesar, which broke out shortlythereafter. In the wake of Pompey’s defeat at Pharsalus (48 BCE),

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Les confessions,” in his Oeuvres complètes, ed. BernardGagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 4 vols. (n.p.: Gallimard, 1959–69), 1:256: “Que nesuis-je né Romain!” All translations are my own unless otherwise stated.

2. The most detailed treatment remains Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpre-tation, 2 vols. (New York: Norton, 1966–69), vol. 1, The Rise of Modern Paganism. Forthe English scene, see Philip Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

3. The great-grandson of Cato the Censor, also called Cato the Elder. In eighteenth-century writings there were occasions when it was not clear which of the two was meant.In all but a few cases I have avoided such references. In what follows, “Cato” will alwaysrefer to Cato the Younger.

Cato the Younger in the Enlightenment

N A T H A N I E L W O L L O C H

Haifa, Israel

Nathaniel Wolloch „ Cato the Younger in the Enlightenment 61

Cato led a small band of troops to Utica in North Africa (present-dayTunisia) and, following the republican defeat in Thapsus (46 BCE),after doing his best to evacuate his followers, Cato, still in Utica, com-mitted suicide. The story quickly spread that he had spent his lastnight in perfect equanimity, repeatedly reading Plato’s Phaedo on theimmortality of the soul, then stabbed himself unsuccessfully and,when his family and friends tried to have his wound dressed, tore outhis own bowels and died.4

The example of the Roman republican stoic ending his life in suchfashion rather than submitting to his triumphant adversary fascinatedpeople throughout antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modernera and faded from public memory only in the last century.5 In theeighteenth century in particular it was extremely popular, althoughthere were those who, on the contrary, were critical of it.6 Some of thismaterial has been examined in recent scholarship, but these studies byand large have centered on Joseph Addison and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.This essay is not meant by any means as a comprehensive survey ofeighteenth-century attitudes toward Cato; its argument is, rather, thatvarious eighteenth-century British and French treatments of the figure

4. The most important source for his life remains Plutarch, “Cato the Younger,” inLives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, 13 vols. (Loeb ed.; London: Heinemann, 1914–26),8:235–411. There are not many modern studies centering on him. Still of use areCharles Oman, Seven Roman Statesmen of the Late Republic (London: Arnold, 1910),204–33; and Lily Ross Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1949), 119–39, 162–82. For a recent popular treatment, see LucyHughes-Hallett, Heroes: Saviors, Traitors, and Supermen; a History of Hero Worship (NewYork: Knopf, 2004), 76–130. Cato was traditionally considered by scholars as havingled the Optimates party against that of the Populares, but more recent scholarship hasrelinquished such terminology as too modern in its evocation of a party system thatdid not in fact exist in ancient Rome; see P. A. Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic andRelated Essays (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 32–45.

5. For the classical and medieval eras, see Robert J. Goar, The Legend of Cato Uticensisfrom the First Century BC to the Fifth Century AD, with an Appendix on Dante and Cato(Brussels: Latomus, 1987).

6. For surveys of this popularity in eighteenth-century European writings, drama, andmusic, see Denise Leduc-Fayette, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et le mythe de l’antiquité (Paris:Vrin, 1974), 54–56; and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Jacques entre Socrate et Caton: Textesinédits de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1750–1753), ed. Claude Pichois and René Pintard (Paris:Corti, 1972), 78–112. The main study to date of the eighteenth-century criticism ofCato is Ian Donaldson, “Cato in Tears: Stoical Guises of the Man of Feeling,” in Studiesin the Eighteenth Century II: Papers Presented at the Second David Nichol Smith MemorialSeminar, Canberra, 1970, ed. R. F. Brissenden (University of Toronto Press, 1973), 377–95.Some criticism of Cato focused on his “impious” act of suicide. For a general survey ofattitudes toward suicide in the period, see Lester G. Crocker, “The Discussion of Suicidein the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas 13 (1952): 47–72.

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of Cato offer a key to understanding an important and neglectedaspect of the emerging democratic ideals of the Enlightenment—thatis, the emphasis on the dialectical tension between society and theindividuals who compose it.

Cato’s story played a significant role in the political discourse regard-ing republicanism, from the classical world to the eighteenth century.Republicanism, in this sense, was first and foremost classical republi-canism: not a method of governance, but a philosophical and politicalideal based on ancient Greek and Roman exempla, and less a form ofpolitical organization and more a philosophical stance of personalassertion, often in the face of constraints and difficulties.7 Stoic phi-losophy often played a part in this classical republican ethos, especiallyin discussions of Cato.

Fissures in the generally laudatory consideration of Cato wereapparent from the start. His contemporary Cicero was one of the firstto cement Cato’s reputation, claiming that he “had been endowedby nature with an austerity beyond belief”; Cato committed suicidebecause it conformed with his way of life, “and it was for him to dierather than to look upon the face of a tyrant.”8 Cicero wrote to Catothat “in all my various literary works, I have ranked you not only aboveall whom I ever met, but above all of whom I ever heard.”9 Yet bothmen had reservations about each other. Cicero upbraided Cato for hisexcessive stoic severity.10 Cicero’s letters preserve Cato’s only survivingpiece of writing, a short letter that praises Cicero but also insinuatescriticism of his quest for personal advancement.11

In the early Roman Empire, criticisms couched within praises appear.For example, Velleius Paterculus wrote that Cato “never did a rightaction solely for the sake of seeming to do the right, but because hecould not do otherwise.”12 However, “To praise Cato’s integrity wouldbe sacrilege, but he can almost be charged with eccentricity in the

7. See Daniel T. Rodgers, “Republicanism: The Career of a Concept,” Journal ofAmerican History 79 (1992): 11–38; and Perez Zagorin, “Republicanisms,” British Journalfor the History of Philosophy 11 (2003): 701–14.

8. Cicero, De Officiis, trans. Walter Miller (Loeb ed.; London: Heinemann, 1913), 115(I.xxxi.112). When available, original titles and page citations are given in parenthesesfor classical works.

9. Cicero, The Letters to His Friends, trans. W. Glynn Williams, 3 vols. (Loeb ed.;London: Heinemann, 1927–29), 3:259 (Epistulae ad Familiares XV.iv.12).

10. See Cicero, In Catilinam I–IV; Pro Murena; Pro Sulla; Pro Flacco, trans. C. Macdonald(Loeb ed.; London: Heinemann, 1977), 260–71 (Pro Murena, 60–66).

11. See Cicero, Letters to his Friends, 3:264–67 (Epistulae ad Familiares XV.v.).12. Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History, trans. Frederick W. Shipley

(Loeb ed.; London: Heinemann, 1924), 125 (II.xxxv.).


display of it.”13 Even more important for our purposes was the poetLucan, who has always been considered one of Cato’s most influentialand tenacious admirers and who, while comparing Caesar and Pompey,wrote one of the most famous laudatory lines on Cato, in effect com-paring him to the gods: “For, if the victor had the gods on his side,the vanquished had Cato.”14 Yet, as W. R. Johnson has claimed, Lucan’sCato was both a hero and a ridiculed figure whose virtue was fantasticand implausible, in fact a kind of caricature.15 This ambivalence wasevident, for example, when Lucan depicted Cato addressing his soldiersbefore their perilous journey through the African desert, telling themthat “virtue rejoices when it pays dear for its existence.”16 There wasmore than a touch here of the cruelty and futility of Cato’s unbendingvirtue, which necessitated the sacrifice of others. This was even moreevident in Cato’s monologue to Brutus, in which he claimed, accord-ing to Lucan, that he would “follow to the grave the mere name andempty ghost of Freedom. So be it. Let Rome pay atonement in full tothe pitiless gods, and let no man’s life be denied to the claim of war!”17

Particularly significant was the example of Plutarch, whose biographyof Cato became the most important source for his life and laudedreputation. Yet a careful reading reveals that Plutarch was typicallybalanced in his depiction of Cato.18 He described him as severe butalso as a mild and amiable private person when this did not conflict withvirtue or the state and public interest. Thus, when defeat by Caesarwas imminent and Cato was already resolute to die, he neverthelessmade every effort to ensure the well-being of his allies. More complexwas the observation that Cato “was possessed, as it were, with a kindof inspiration for the pursuit of every virtue; but, above all, thatform of goodness which consists in rigid justice that will not bend toclemency or favour, was his great delight” (245–47). Plutarch reservedhis most memorable remark to the parallel life of Phocion, when hecompared Cato to fruits out of season, “For, as we look upon thesewith delight and admiration, but do not use them, so the old-fashioned

13. Ibid., 151 (II.xlv.).14. Lucan, The Civil War, trans. J. D. Duff (Loeb ed.; London: Heinemann, 1928),

12–13 (Pharsalia I.128).15. See W. R. Johnson, Momentary Monsters: Lucan and His Heroes (Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1987), 35–66.16. Lucan, Civil War, 534–35 (IX.404).17. Ibid., 78–81 (II.285–325). Lucan’s contemporary Seneca was more unequivocal

in his praise of Cato, writing, for example, that “Cato did not survive freedom, norfreedom Cato.” See Seneca, “De Constantia Sapientis,” in Moral Essays, trans. John W.Basore, 3 vols. (Loeb ed.; London: Heinemann, 1928–35), 1:53 (II.2).

18. See Plutarch, “Cato the Younger,” 8:391–93, 405; further page references to thisvolume are in the text.


character of Cato, which, after a long lapse of time, made its appear-ance among lives that were corrupted and customs that were debased,enjoyed great repute and fame, but was not suited to the needs ofmen because of the weight and grandeur of its virtue, which were outof all proportion to the immediate times” (151). Plutarch’s observa-tions were to remain of prime importance for early modern percep-tions of Cato and could be interpreted either favorably or critically,depending on the proclivity of his readers. The legend of Cato, there-fore, was latently “contaminated” at its very roots.

In the Middle Ages, of course, this did not matter. At a time whenthe classical republican ideal was practically disregarded, Cato’s will-ful suicide was totally unacceptable from a Christian perspective, aswas his sharing his wife with Hortensius.19 St. Augustine saw Catoas having committed suicide mainly because he was embarrassed toreceive Caesar’s pardon, but Augustine conceded that Cato was morevirtuous than Caesar because he did not seek glory in itself.20 OnlyDante, toward the end of the Middle Ages, signaled the reappearanceof the praise of Cato, depicting him not as the typical condemnedsuicide but as the custodian of purgatory, praised for having died forthe sake of freedom.21

Yet only in the Renaissance, with the rearticulation of classical repub-lican values, did Cato truly regain his mythical stature, although thefutility of his sacrifice was constantly in sight. In this context one mustremember that republican virtue was conceived first and foremost as anoppositional ideal, most prominent in exigent circumstances, and notnecessarily measured by practical success. Thus Niccolò Machiavellicould claim that Cato was virtuous but ineffective because he was toosolitary in his time.22 Hans Baron gave a highly influential accountof how the Renaissance renewed the combination of study with civicactivity. The revived ancient concepts of republicanism, resistance totyranny, and vita activa et politica were combined with the humanisticvita contemplativa, creating the combination that Baron termed “civichumanism.”23 In that light, classical republicanism was first and fore-

19. Goar, Legend of Cato Uticensis, 77–100.20. St. Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson

(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 23–34 (I.23), 196–201 (V.12), 855 (XIX.4).21. Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. Laurence Binyon, in The Portable Dante, ed. Paolo

Milano (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 189–92 (Purgatorio 1.31–109).22. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan

Tarcov (University of Chicago Press, 1996), 211.23. See Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Re-

publican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, revised one-volume edition (Princeton

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most a philosophical and political ideal aimed at political praxis, irre-spective of the feasibility of success.

This did not however entail unmixed praise of Cato. Michel deMontaigne, in his essay “On Cruelty” (ca. 1574–75), claimed thatboth Socrates and Cato had died deaths appropriate to their lives andcharacters, yet Socrates’s death was even more beautiful. While Mon-taigne praised Cato’s virtue, he doubted whether when committingsuicide he had been truly calm in the stoic sense. In fact Cato wasgrateful and joyful to have had the opportunity of quitting the worldin this fashion. According to Montaigne it was only his singular virtuesthat justified this behavior.24 However, in an essay devoted to Cato,Montaigne evinced the customary eulogy and criticized people seek-ing to denigrate the motives of great men, for example, those whoattributed Cato’s actions to fear of Caesar or to ambition. He wrote:“Foolish people! He [Cato] might have done a beautiful, generousand just action, rather with ignominy than for glory. That person wasveritably a model that nature chose to show just how far human virtueand firmness was able to reach.”25

Toward the end of the seventeenth century François de Salignacde la Mothe-Fénelon, in his Dialogues of the Dead (1690), included twodialogues unequivocally favorable to Cato; in one he conversed withCaesar, in the other with Cicero. The first of these depicted Cato asthe opposite of Caesar, whom Cato accused of effeminacy, except whenoperating against his own country. The people mourned Caesar’s death“because the people always remain like the people, credulous, coarse,

24. Montaigne, “De la cruauté,” in his Oeuvres completes, ed. Albert Thibaudet andMaurice Rat (n.p.: Gallimard, 1962), 400–405. According to Paul Rahe, in this essay,Montaigne’s criticism of Cato’s suicide is connected with his opposition to the classicalvirtues of valor and self-sacrifice; Montaigne preferred to these goodness and humanityand his own mildness. See Paul A. Rahe, “Antiquity Surpassed: The Repudiation of Clas-sical Republicanism,” in Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649–1776, ed.David Wootton (Stanford University Press, 1994), 242–45.

25. Montaigne, “Du jeune Caton,” in his Oeuvres completes, 227: “Sottes gens! Il eut bienfaict une belle action genereuse et juste, plus tost avecq ignominie que pour la gloire.Ce personnage là fut veritablement un patron que nature choisit pour montrer jusquesoù l’humaine vertu et fermeté pouvoit atteindre.”

University Press, 1966), and “The Memory of Cicero’s Roman Civic Spirit in the Me-dieval Centuries and the Florentine Renaissance,” in his In Search of Florentine CivicHumanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, 2 vols. (PrincetonUniversity Press, 1988), 1:94–133. Baron’s thesis has also drawn much criticism, althoughit has still remained highly influential. See James Hankins, “The ‘Baron Thesis’ afterForty Years and Some Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni,” Journal of the History of Ideas56 (1995): 309–38.


capricious, blind, enemies of their own true interest.”26 This is a typicalexample of the classical republican ideal, including both a detestationof tyranny and a fear of, and contempt for, the “vulgar” masses. Thedialogue with Cicero was less unequivocally laudatory of Cato, althoughhe was still depicted very favorably. Cato criticized Cicero as an incon-siderable philosopher, accusing him of having been inconsistent andirresolute, less concerned with actions than with writing and seekingpraise and glory. For his part Cicero accused Cato of futile action.27

As we shall shortly see, the comparison of the two republican martyrswas a favorite subject in the early modern era. While Cato was con-sidered impractical, Cicero was criticized for being too pragmatic,and the fact that Cicero was murdered and did not end his own lifeworked in favor of the praise of Cato.

So, when Joseph Addison wrote Cato: A Tragedy (first production1713), he was drawing on a well-established tradition. The play was agreat success, appealing equally to Tories and Whigs; it became themain conduit for the Cato legend throughout the eighteenth century.28

Addison was a fairly conservative religious Whig, and therefore, beyondmaking the play politically innocuous, he had the additional problemof coping with Cato’s suicide. An ambivalence toward suicide wastypical of eighteenth-century England, and as Catharine Edwards hasargued, Addison’s solution, appreciated by most of his contemporaries,was to emphasize not the suicide itself, but rather Cato’s coping withdeath and his commitment, albeit failed, to the republic.29 Given theinfluence of Addison’s play on subsequent debates about Cato through-

26. François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, “Dialogues des morts composées pourl’éducation de MGR le duc de Bourgogne,” in Œuvres de Fénelon archevêque de Cambrai, 8vols. (Paris, 1854), 4:493–97 (no. 42, “César et Caton”), 495, for the citation: “Que lepeuple est toujours peuple, crédule, grossier, capricieux, aveugle, ennemi de sonvéritable intérêt.” Fénelon was undoubtedly aware that he was presenting a differentapproach than Sallust, who despite his connections with Caesar, praised both the latterand Cato while comparing them. See Sallust, trans. J. C. Rolfe (Loeb ed.; London:Heinemann, 1921), 89–113 (Bellum Catilinae, LI–LIV).

27. Fénelon, “Dialogues des morts,” 497–500 (no. 43, “Caton et Cicéron”).28. For general remarks on the play, see Julie Ellison, Cato’s Tears and the Making of

Anglo-American Emotion (University of Chicago Press, 1999), 48–60, 186; Ayres, Clas-sical Culture, 162–64; and the editors’ introduction in Joseph Addison, Cato: A Tragedy,and Selected Essays, ed. Christine Dunn Henderson and Mark E. Yellin (Indianapolis:Liberty Fund, 2004), xi–xxvi. For an example of the wide variety of eulogies of Catothat Addison’s play prompted, see Lewis Theobald, “The Life and Character of MarcusPortius Cato Uticensis,” ibid., 253–71.

29. Catharine Edwards, “Modelling Roman Suicide? The Afterlife of Cato,” Economyand Society 34 (2005): 200–222. For Addison’s ambivalence toward Cato’s character, seeDonaldson, “Cato in Tears,” 382–86, 389–91, 395.


out the century, we need to take a closer look at it. My aim is to high-light the points of criticism that emerge in what has been consideredone of the most positive laudations of Cato.

The plot unfolds in the last days of Cato in Utica and relates thelove stories of the Numidian prince Juba and Cato’s daughter, Marcia,and of Cato’s two sons, Portius and Marcus, both in love with a maidnamed Lucia.30 This is combined with the story of a plot against Catoconcocted by a few of his associates. In the second act, Syphax, theNumidian general, speaking to Juba, says of the Romans:

The boasted ancestors of these great menWhose virtues you admire, were all such ruffians.This dread of nations, this almighty Rome,That comprehends in her wide empire’s boundsAll under heaven, was founded on a rape.Your Scipios, Cæsars, Pompeys, and your Catos,(These gods on earth) are all the spurious broodOf violated maids, of ravish’d Sabines.

(2.5.43–50)

These words are expressed by one of the villains of the play, and Jubacontradicts them, but one cannot rule out a certain frank sentimenton Addison’s part, criticizing the obvious violence that had attendedRoman republican grandeur, and that was often overlooked in earlymodern republican discourse.

The excessiveness of Cato’s stoic virtue is evident in the fourth act,when Portius accompanies the procession bearing the body of hisbrother Marcus, who was killed fighting. When Cato’s apprehensionthat his son might have forsaken his post is dispelled, and he learnsthat Marcus had died bravely, Cato expresses satisfaction, remarking:“Thanks to the gods! my boy has done his duty!” He wishes to seeMarcus’s body, exclaiming:

How beautiful is death, when earn’d by virtue!Who would not be that youth? what pity is itThat we can die but once to serve our country!—Why sits this sadness on your brows, my friends?I should have blushed if Cato’s house had stoodSecure, and flourished in a civil war.

30. Addison allowed himself considerable literary license in augmenting thenumber of Cato’s children who accompanied him to Utica from one son to two sonsand a daughter. For the text of the play, including Pope’s verse prologue discussedbelow, see Joseph Addison, Cato, a Tragedy, in The Works of Joseph Addison, 3 vols. (NewYork, 1857), 3:475–99. Subsequent references to the play are given in the text.


—Portius, behold thy brother, and rememberThy life is not thy own, when Rome demands it.

(4.4.80–87)31

Yet immediately Cato despairs in view of Caesar’s imminent triumphand wishes that his friends and allies will either flee Caesar or remainalive by his clemency. He commands Portius to retire to his ancestrallands, telling him: “Content thyself to be obscurely good. / When viceprevails, and impious men bear sway, / The post of honour is a privatestation.” Portius then replies: “I hope my father does not recommend /A life to Portius that he scorns himself” (4.4.140–44). But Cato doesnot reply to this query. Addison was perhaps attempting to portrayCato as an anxious father wanting to preserve the life of his son, yet inthat case he was undoubtedly also denoting an inconsistency in Cato’sethics and conduct.

Addison’s criticism became more emphatic toward the end of theplay, when the dying Cato (Addison, perhaps trying to retain the de-corum of the Augustan stage, avoided depicting the “double” suicideand Cato’s tearing out his bowels) exclaimed his last words:

—I’m sick to death—O when shall I get looseFrom this vain world, th’ abode of guilt and sorrow!—And yet methinks a beam of light breaks inOn my departing soul. Alas! I fearI’ve been too hasty. O ye powers, that searchThe heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts,If I have done amiss, impute it not!—The best may err, but you are good, and—oh!

(5.4.92–99)

Addison thus in effect made Cato recognize the sinfulness of suicide.Addison attempted to mitigate the harshness of Cato’s excesses andfanaticism and present them in a decorous fashion. Many in the eigh-teenth century took the portrayal as uncritical. Yet those lookingmore closely would have noticed Addison’s uneasiness; his very needto temper some of Cato’s actions is evidence enough of this.

31. Compare the popularity of the legend of Lucius Junius Brutus (not the famousBrutus who led the assassination of Caesar), who in the sixth century BCE condemnedhis own sons to death for conspiring to restore the Tarquins to power. At an indicativetime, in 1789, Jacques-Louis David depicted the legend in a famous painting, The LictorsBring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, now in the Louvre. For Addison’s treatment of Cato’sresponse to his son’s death in the play, see Donaldson, “Cato in Tears,” 389–91, 395.


In any event, the popularity of the play resounded throughout thecentury, and, for many throughout Europe, “Cato” meant first andforemost Addison’s Cato. One of the most important offshoots of thisnow even more emphasized Cato legend was the publication, not longafter Addison’s play, of Cato’s Letters (1720–23), the republican tractscomposed by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.32 These dealt witha variety of political, economic, and other early eighteenth-centuryEnglish issues but used Cato as a political metaphor, not directly as ahistorical figure.33

Another important influence that Addison’s play had was ineighteenth-century America, particularly on the revolutionary gen-eration.34 Caroline Robbins claimed that the commonwealthman tra-dition was even more influential in America than in England.35 ThomasJefferson, for example, in a letter to John Adams from 1819, notedthat Cato, Cicero, and Brutus were truly powerless to help their com-patriots, who were unenlightened, vitiated, and unable by their very

32. The modern Cato Institute is named after this publication, not directly after Catohimself. Some scholars claim that, contrary to traditional interpretation, Cato’s Lettersis not simply part of the classical republican tradition but of a tradition that did not seerepublicanism and economic liberalism as mutually exclusive and tried to reconcilethem. In that light, the Cato Institute has taken its name from an appropriate source.See Annie Mitchell, “A Liberal Republican ‘Cato,’ ” American Journal of Political Science 48(2004): 588–603; Ronald Hamowy, “Cato’s Letters, John Locke, and the RepublicanParadigm,” History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 273–94; Vickie B. Sullivan, Machiavelli,Hobbes, and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England (Cambridge UniversityPress, 2004), 15–16, 21, 26, 194–95, 227–57, 259–60, 264–68, and “Muted and ManifestEnglish Machiavellianism: The Reconciliation of Machiavellian Republicanism withLiberalism in Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government and Trenchard’s and Gordon’sCato’s Letters,” in Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy, ed. Paul A. Rahe (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2006), 58–86.

33. For the closest allusion to Cato himself, see John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon,Cato’s Letters: Or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, ed.Ronald Hamowy, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995), 1:127–30 (no. 28, “A De-fence of Cato against his Defamers”). See also Ellison, Cato’s Tears, 67–69, 186–94; andCaroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission,Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles IIuntil the War with the Thirteen Colonies (1959; repr., Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004),105–8, 111–21.

34. See Frederic M. Litto, “Addison’s Cato in the Colonies,” William and Mary Quarterly,3rd ser., 23 (1966): 431–49; and Forrest McDonald, foreword to Addison, Cato (2004ed.), vii–x.

35. See Robbins, Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, 376–77. We should notein passing that Robbins’s commonwealthman tradition incorporates not only classicalrepublicanism but also more democratically inclined early liberalism: witness the caseof Cato’s Letters. On the popularity and influence of Addison’s play and of Cato’s Lettersin revolutionary America, see also Ellison, Cato’s Tears, 67–69.


nature to be free and democratic.36 The implication was clear—theAmericans had succeeded where the ancient Romans had failed be-cause they had many Catos, Ciceros, and Brutuses, not just a handful.Jefferson may have been thinking particularly of George Washington,who was greatly influenced by Addison’s play and attempted to embodythe Catonic ideal of patriotism, selflessness, and self-mastery.37

Back in England things were more complicated. Alexander Pope,with Addison’s approval, had written a verse prologue to Cato, inwhich he praised Cato at the expense of Caesar. The latter was “ignoblyvain, and impotently great,” while Cato was “a brave man strugglingin the storms of fate, / And greatly falling with a falling state!”38 JorgeBastos da Silva has claimed that Pope, like Addison, implied somecriticism of Cato.39 “Greatly falling with a falling state!” might be con-strued as part of this criticism, in a very similar vein to Jefferson a cen-tury later. However, much more important was the signal disagreementon the attitude toward Cato between Addison and his friend RichardSteele. The latter also wrote verses for Addison’s play, but Steele thereconcentrated on the praise of the playwright and avoided any state-ment about Cato himself.40 Steele’s objection to Cato centered on aChristian criticism of stoic philosophy in general, and specifically ofsuicide.41 In The Christian Hero (1701), Steele emphasized benevolenceas the supreme virtue and identified it with the Christian virtue ofcharity.42 He depicted Cato’s death thus:

His fall alarm’d his wretched Dependants, whose help he resisted by tearing open his own Bowels, and rushing out of Life with Fury, Rage, and Indignation.

36. Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, December 10, 1819, in Jefferson’s PoliticalWritings, ed. Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball (Cambridge University Press, 1999),225–26.

37. See Paul K. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1988), 173–74, 210.

38. Alexander Pope, prologue to Addison, Cato (1857 ed.), 3:480.39. Jorge Bastos da Silva, “Cato’s Ghosts: Pope, Addison, and Opposition Cultural

Politics,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 38 (2005): 95–115.40. For the verses, see Addison, Cato (1857 ed.), 3:477. Steele’s verses were among

those written by several people on the occasion of the play, most of which (though notPope’s) Addison preferred not to be printed with the play. See the editorial remark inAddison, Cato (2004 ed.), xxv. The editors of this modern edition have followed Addi-son’s intentions, but all the verses can be found in the older edition quoted above, Ad-dison, Cato (1857 ed.), 3:477–80, 499.

41. See Edwards, “Modelling Roman Suicide?” 212–13, 216.42. See the editor’s introductory remarks in Richard Steele, The Christian Hero, ed.

Rae Blanchard (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), xxviii–xxxix. For Steele’s viewof Cato, see Donaldson, “Cato in Tears,” 380–81.


This was the applauded Exit of that Noble Roman, who is said with a superior and invincible Constancy to have eluded the Partiality of Fortune, and escap’d the Incursion upon the Liberty of his Country: It seems then, had he liv’d, his own had been lost, and his calling himself still Free, and Cæsar the Usurper, a Bond-man and Slave, were but mere Words; for his Opinion of things was in reality Stunn’d by Success, and he dy’d Disappointed of the Imaginary Self-Existence his own Set of Thoughts had promis’d him, by an Action below the Precepts of his Philosophy, and the Constancy of his Life.

Thus did Cato leave the World, for which indeed he was very unfit.43

Steele criticized Cato, Cassius, and Brutus, and—contrary to the re-publican view—was more sympathetic with Caesar (35). He also foundfault with the ancient examples of suicide; these acts of “Self-murder”were not prompted by honorable motives, since “it was ever, and everwill be, Pride or Cowardise [sic], that makes Life insupportable” (68–69). Humans are obliged to comprehend their small place in the divineuniverse, contemplate divine mercy, and bear the suffering that istheir share in this world. Ultimately, “true Greatness of Mind is to bemaintain’d only by Christian Principles” (70). Moreover, contrary toChristian virtues, “Heathen Virtues” concentrated on fame itself, whichmeant they depended on disappointment or success (74–75). Accord-ing to such a standard, Cato and the whole classical republican tra-dition were an utter failure.

A different type of criticism of this ideal came within the republicantradition itself and centered on an unfavorable comparison of Catowith Cicero. Perhaps its most important representative in Englandwas Conyers Middleton, familiar to modern scholars (if at all) for hisinfluence on the young Edward Gibbon and the author of a verypopular sympathetic biography of Cicero.44 There Middleton claimedthat “Cicero chose the middle way between the obstinacy of Cato andthe indolence of Atticus” and added: “If we must needs compare him[Cicero], therefore, with Cato, as some writers affect to do, it is certain,that if Cato’s virtues seem more splendid in theory, Cicero’s will befound superior in practice: the one was romantic, the other rational;

43. Steele, The Christian Hero, 20–21. Further page references to this edition willappear in the text.

44. See Addison Ward, “The Tory View of Roman History,” Studies in English Literature,1500–1900 4 (1964): 431–36; and Frank M. Turner, “British Politics and the Demise ofthe Roman Republic: 1700–1939,” in his Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in VictorianIntellectual Life (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 234–36. For Middleton’s influenceon Gibbon, see J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 1, The Enlightenments of EdwardGibbon, 1737–1764 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 27, 45–49, 53, 234, 264.


the one drawn from the refinements of the schools, the other fromnature and social life; the one always unsuccessful, often hurtful;the other always beneficial, often salutary, to the republic.”45 Gibbontook a different republican view. He regarded Caesar and Augustusas guilty of damaging the free commonwealth, while seeing figuressuch as Tacitus and Cato, who had learned from Greek philosophyliberal notions about human nature, as having unjustly suffered underthe first emperors.46 Throughout his adult life Gibbon retained a gen-erally favorable opinion about Cato.47 Yet his early Essay on the Studyof Literature (1761), while praising the virtue of Cato’s time comparedto the later Tiberian era, also mentioned Cato while criticizing thedebauchery of the Romans and their conduct toward their wives,probably alluding to Cato’s lending of his wife to Hortensius.48 How-ever, it was in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(1776–88) that Gibbon made his most critical observation on Cato. Indiscussing the character of Boethius, Gibbon asserted, “We may learnfrom the example of Cato, that a character of pure and inflexible virtueis the most apt to be misled by prejudice, to be heated by enthusiasm,and to confound private enmities with public justice. The disciple ofPlato might exaggerate the infirmities of nature, and the imperfectionsof society.”49 “Enthusiasm”—the wording here was not fortuitous. Theimplication is that Gibbon viewed Cato’s excessive displays of stoic andrepublican virtue as akin to the irrational and dangerous religious ex-cess that constituted a serious threat to long-lasting civic freedom.50

One of the most ardent eighteenth-century admirers of classical re-publicanism and of Cato was Gibbon’s correspondent Adam Ferguson.Ferguson emphasized the importance of active participation in publiclife in order to enhance freedom, an outlook that pervaded his treat-

45. [Conyers Middleton], “The Life of Cicero,” in his Cicero’s Life and Letters (Edin-burgh, 1880), 311–12.

46. See Howard D. Weinbrot, Augustus Caesar in “Augustan” England: The Decline of aClassical Norm (Princeton University Press, 1978), 107.

47. See Gibbon’s remarks in the early “Digression on the Character of Brutus” (criti-cizing Brutus, Cato’s nephew and son-in-law, for not inculcating the virtue of his uncle)and in the last of his substantial works, “Antiquities of the House of Brunswick” (prais-ing Cato’s philosophy and patriotism), both in The English Essays of Edward Gibbon, ed.Patricia B. Craddock (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 101–3 and 482, respectively.

48. Edward Gibbon, Essai sur l’étude de la littérature and An Essay on the Study of Lit-erature, introduction by John Valdimir Price (London, 1764, and Dublin, 1777; repr.,London: Routledge & Thoemmes, 1994), 103–5.

49. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. DavidWomersley, 3 vols. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005), 2:552. For favorable passing ref-erences to Cato, see 1:62, 605, 802; 2:429.

50. See J. G. A. Pocock, “Superstition and Enthusiasm in Gibbon’s History of Religion,”Eighteenth Century Life 8 (1982): 83–94.

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ment of Roman history and of Cato in particular.51 In his history ofrepublican Rome, Ferguson wrote emphatically how Cato

chose what was just on its own account. . . . He professed to believe . . . that it might or might not, in particular circumstances, be expedient for a man to preserve or lay down his life; but that, while he kept it, the only good or evil competent to him consisted in the part which he took, as a friend or an enemy to mankind . . . , and he is a rare example of merit, which received its praise even amidst the adulation that was paid to his enemies, and was thought, by the impartial, equally above the reach of commendation or censure.52

Cato was the personification of the combative individual virtue thatFerguson extolled.53 It was not for nothing that he was consideredby his contemporaries as the “Scottish Cato” and also as someone whowas becoming increasingly quaint, a believer in stout but old-fashioneddoctrines.54 His extreme support of the Catonic image testified to allthis, and he gave full vent to this adulatory sentiment in An Essay onthe History of Civil Society (1767), in which he says that Cato “stood dis-tinguished in his age like a man among children, and was raised abovehis opponents, as much by the justness of his understanding, and theextent of his penetration, as he was by the manly fortitude and dis-interestedness with which he strove to baffle the designs of a vain andchildish ambition, that was operating to the ruin of mankind.”55 TheScottish, more than any other variety of the High Enlightenment,exhibited recognition of the importance of commerce and heldwhat can only be termed a liberal economic outlook. Yet the Scottishthinkers too had grown up imbibing the republican and Catonic ideals,and they felt a need to try to reconcile these seemingly incongruousoutlooks.56 Nowhere was this more evident than in the philosophy of

51. See Marco Geuna, “Republicanism and Commercial Society in the Scottish En-lightenment: The Case of Adam Ferguson,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage,ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, 2 vols. (Cambridge University Press,2002), 2:177–95. See also Turner, “British Politics,” 240–45; and J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarismand Religion, vol. 3, The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 406–8.

52. See Adam Ferguson, The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Re-public (New York, 1856), 308, and also the remarks at 180–81, 405.

53. See, for example, Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. FaniaOz-Salzberger (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 47–48.

54. See the editorial remarks ibid., xxiv–xxv.55. Ibid., 130. See also 211–12, 235, 251.56. See Karen O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire

to Gibbon (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 104–10, 148–51; and J. G. A. Pocock, “TheVarieties of Whiggism from Exclusion to Reform: A History of Ideology and Discourse,”in his Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in theEighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1985), 298.


Adam Smith, who attempted to combine commercial realities with re-publican hopes; for him, economics, ethics, and history all became partof a general Weltanschauung.57 In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759),which Smith continued to revise and expand almost to the end of hislife, he wrote of the appreciation people had for those who possessedthe unusual ability, above the ordinary human weakness, to commandthemselves during dreadful calamities. A combination of sympathyand approbation with wonder and surprise constituted admirationin such cases, of which Cato was an example.58 Similarly, EdmundBurke held that “Scipio and Cato are both virtuous characters; but weare more deeply affected by the violent death of the one [Cato], andthe ruin of the great cause he adhered to, than with the deservedtriumphs and uninterrupted prosperity of the other [Scipio].”59 Thiswas a novel and in many ways unsettling way of considering the sourceof the allure of the Catonic ideal, and it is not out of the question thatSmith was influenced by it. Yet ultimately Smith insisted on retain-ing the traditional version of the positive view of Cato. He seemed toexempt Cato, whom “the lovers of liberty” regarded for ages as “themost venerable martyr of the republican party,”60 from the implicitlycensorious general observation about those who performed extraor-dinary acts because they imagined the praise and glory they would re-ceive posthumously.61

David Hume praised Cato as the virtuous “philosophical patriot.”62

Even more emphatically than Smith, Hume retained an uncensoriousview of suicide.63 It was not harmful to religion, since all nature, includ-ing humanity, obeyed divine law. Therefore no deed whatsoever vio-lated divine providence, and even suicide was natural and permissible.Hume extolled the suicides of Cato and others, noting that if onepraised them, one should also praise modern suicides. By this Hume

57. See Donald Winch, “Commercial Realities, Republican Principles,” in vanGelderen and Skinner, Republicanism, 2:293–310.

58. See Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cam-bridge University Press, 2002), 58–59, 363–71.

59. See Edmund Burke, “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of theSublime and Beautiful,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 1, The EarlyWritings, ed. T. O. McLoughlin and James T. Boulton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 222.

60. Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 337.61. Ibid., 135. For more on Smith and Cato, see Ellison, Cato’s Tears, 10, 67–71.62. David Hume, An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp

(Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 172.63. For Smith’s treatment of suicide (though without reference to Cato), see his Theory

of Moral Sentiments, 338. For Hume, see David Hume, “Of Suicide,” in his Essays: Moral,Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 577–89.


was pointing, perhaps inadvertently, to one of the long-standing incon-sistencies—originating with Dante—of the Cato myth, namely, the will-ingness of Christian apologists to excuse Cato’s suicide as in someway permissible because of his outstanding spirit and selfless motives.As we saw above, there were those like Steele who were unwilling toaccept this type of argumentation, even from Addison. Yet Hume wasalso a critic of Cato on familiar grounds—not for his suicide, but be-cause his actions were politically impractical and even harmful. Humeacknowledged the “virtue and good intentions of cato and brutus”but asked “to what purpose did their zeal serve? Only to hasten thefatal period of the roman government, and render its convulsionsand dying agonies more violent and painful.”64 Again, enthusiasm—“zeal”—was dangerous and destructive.

In France the intellectual climate and eventual dramatic develop-ments led the Cato myth along a different route: during most of theeighteenth century, one could find the normal mix of commenda-tion with occasional mild censure, yet as the revolution drew near,the classical republican ideal turned increasingly from a theoreticaldebate to a practical reality. Voltaire demonstrated the usual praise ofCato as exemplifying Roman virtue, yet he also claimed that Julianthe Apostate had “all the virtues of Cato, but not his obstinacy and hisbad humor.”65 A more systematic treatment came from Montesquieu.In one of his early essays, he made the popular comparison betweenthe virtues of Cato and Cicero, claiming approvingly that Cicero didnot exhibit futile resistance and did not end his life in cowardly fashionlike Cato during Caesar’s triumph, but found solace in philosophyrather than death.66 Later in life, however, Montesquieu reversed hisopinion. In Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romansand on their Decadence (1734), he claimed that Cicero was incompetentto hold a leading role, despite his genius, since he had a commonsoul. In comparison, Cato was more dispassionate and superior. “WithCicero, virtue used to be the accessory, with Cato it used to be glory.Cicero always saw himself first, Cato always forgot about himself. Thelatter wanted to save the republic for itself, the former in order to

64. Hume, “That Politics May be Reduced to a Science,” in Essays, 30.65. See Voltaire, “Dictionnaire philosophique,” in The Complete Works of Voltaire,

vol. 36, ed. Christiane Mervaud et al. (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1994), 271 (s.v.“Julien le philosophe empereur Romain”). For praise of Cato, see also 112–13 (s.v.“Fausseté des vertus humaines”), 177 (s.v. “Grâce”).

66. Montesquieu, “Discours sur Cicéron,” in his Œuvres complètes, ed. Roger Caillois,2 vols. (n.p.: Gallimard, 1949–51), 1:93–98. The exact date of composition of this earlywork is not definitely known.


boast about it.”67 In discussing figures such as Brutus, Cassius, andCato, Montesquieu commented on the role that suicide had played inRoman culture. He claimed that this derived partly from the stoic sectand the wish of great men not to survive defeat and partly from thosewho had committed crimes wanting to prevent their memory frombeing tarnished. Suicide was a point of honor; one had the opportunityof ending one’s life at the time of one’s own choosing and of exhibit-ing heroism. All these reasons greatly facilitated suicide in a situationwhere self-love (amour propre in the common, not Rousseauist, sense)was more valuable than life itself. Nowhere did Montesquieu condemnsuicide in itself.

The legend of Cato, and classical republicanism in general, gainedincreasing popularity immediately before, and of course during, therevolution. The Abbé de Mably combined an admiration of Plato andstoicism with an emphatic republicanism. Yet he was also realisticenough to understand that the Roman republic had ultimately failed.In his time “Cato alone had honor; but in conducting himself as if acitizen of the republic of Plato while among thieves, his virtue wouldonly supply him with impotent resources, and even contradicted hisgood intentions.”68 Mably lived to see only the growing unrest beforethe revolution. Yet he was a clear representative of the ardent neo-classicism that was spreading in French arts and culture, so well attestedby the popularity of the paintings of Jacques-Louis David.69 Classicalrepublicanism, as Keith Baker has claimed, in contrast with the moremodern eighteenth-century republicanism, was less a form of govern-ment and more a discourse of political will and of opposition, andit was as such that it contributed to the revolution.70 It ceased to be

67. Montesquieu, “Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et deleur decadence,” in his Œuvres complètes, 2:134–35: “L’accessoire, chez Cicéron, c’étoitla vertu; chez Caton, c’étoit le gloire: Cicéron se voyoit toujours le premier: Catons’oublioit toujours: celui-ci vouloit sauver la république pour elle-même; celui-là pours’en vanter.”

68. See Abbé de Mably, “Observations sur les Romains,” in Œuvres complétes de l’abbéde Mably, 13 vols. (Lyon, 1796), 4:302: “Caton seul avoit de l’honneur; mais se conduisanten citoyen de la république de Platon parmi des brigands, sa vertu ne lui fournissoitque des ressources impuissantes, et contrarioit même ses bonnes intentions.”

69. For a general survey, see Hugh Honour, Neo-Classicism (Harmondsworth: Penguin,1991). For an interesting example of pre-Revolutionary classical republicanism andspecifically the praise of Cato, see Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution:Essays in French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press,1990), 128–52.

70. Keith Michael Baker, “Transformations of Classical Republicanism in Eighteenth-Century France,” Journal of Modern History 73 (2001): 32–53.


merely a philosophical issue and turned into a tangible project, notleast following the occurrences in America. In such a climate theCatonic legend was bound to do well, and in revolutionary Paris onecould take a stroll down the Rue de Caton.71 In the early stages of therevolution the ancient Greek and Roman republics were emulated,yet usually without advocating democracy or excessive power for themasses.72

We must pause here to make a few general observations. We haveseen the figure of Cato becoming an emblem for classical republicanideals in the eighteenth century. Yet these were by no means synony-mous with the more extreme forms of Whiggism or with any form ofdemocratic sentiment. In that respect the Catonic ideal was congenialto most political outlooks. His suicide, of course, made him unaccept-able from any overt Christian perspective. Yet he was by no means ahero for atheists, who in any event, contrary to a rather unfortunatemisconception, were quite rare even in High Enlightenment Paris.73

In many respects, therefore, Cato seemed innocuous for most formsof moderately “enlightened” philosophies. In a sense this was strange,since he by no means exemplified the toleration that was so importantto most advanced philosophers of the eighteenth century.74 However,his very popularity attests to the importance that resistance to tyrannyhad in the minds of most European literati. Much of the criticism ofCato, religious censure of his suicide excepted, was connected withthe fact that he had failed. It was this that retrospectively made Cato’spersonal idiosyncrasies and political career seem futile and unneces-sarily harsh, and Cicero’s approach, not to mention Caesar’s (forthe monarchists), more advantageous. Yet Cicero and Caesar alsoultimately failed, and their violent ends lacked the luster of Cato’s self-immolation. The ultimate winner, as everyone knew, was Augustus.However, for Cato’s admirers, it was the intention that mattered, andat least before 1776, the possibility of violent emulation of classicalrepublicanism seemed out of the question. Cato’s figure remained

71. See Harold T. Parker, The Cult of Antiquity and the French Revolutionaries: A Study inthe Development of the Revolutionary Spirit (1937; repr., New York: Octagon, 1965), 142.

72. See Claude Mossé, L’Antiquité dans la Révolution française (Paris: Albin Michel,1989), 67–86. See also Parker, Cult of Antiquity, 103–15.

73. See Alan Charles Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris (PrincetonUniversity Press, 1976). The issue of early modern irreligion has long remained debat-able among scholars; see the excellent bibliographical survey in David Wootton, “NewHistories of Atheism,” in Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, ed. MichaelHunter and David Wootton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 13–53.

74. For Enlightenment emphasis on toleration, see, for example, Gay, Enlightenment,2:398–407.


essentially a republican and stoic ideal. Yet whether he was praisedor not, it was highly questionable whether this ideal was fit for con-temporary reality.

This would seem a true summary of Cato’s role in Enlightenmentculture, were it not for the most fervent, and ultimately influential,of his modern admirers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau’s writingswere the most important conduit through which the Catonic idealwas communicated to the French revolutionaries. Ernst Cassirer longago observed that for Rousseau, society was founded on the humanpropensity for perfectibility, which, properly guided, could lead tofreedom.75 Adoration (and it is a fitting expression) for Cato there-fore came naturally for Rousseau, who admired him more than anyother person, alive or dead, with the arguable exception of Jesus. Onemeets Cato at all the most important junctures of Rousseau’s intellec-tual development: in his attempts to overcome the obstructions to areattainment of his own personal innocent transparency, as well asthat of humanity in general, to use Jean Starobinski’s terms.76

Early in his intellectual career Rousseau wrote a Parallel betweenSocrates and Cato (ca. 1752). In this comparison Cato was slightlyfavored. Socrates could live under tyranny because as a philosopherhe himself was free everywhere. But Cato, as a statesman, abhorredtyranny because he wanted all citizens to be free. There was no deathmore noble than Socrates’, but no life more noble than Cato’s. Socrateswould have made people wise; Cato would have made them happy.For a people to be both wise and happy they would have to be taughtby Socrates and governed by Cato. “If you are a philosopher live likeSocrates, if you are only a statesman live like Cato.”77 Rousseau, per-haps because of his own social inadequacy, preferred the active states-man, with all his failings and misery, to the self-satisfied philosopher,precisely because personal serenity was not what benefited societyin general. As Denise Leduc-Fayette has argued, Cato for Rousseau

75. Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. and ed. Peter Gay(New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), 99–106.

76. See Jean Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, trans.Arthur Goldhammer, introduction by Robert J. Morrissey (University of Chicago Press,1988). For Rousseau’s attitude toward Cato, see esp. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques entre Socrateet Caton; Leduc-Fayette, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 53–69; Christopher Kelly, Rousseau’s Exem-plary Life: The “Confessions” as Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1987), 21, 48–75, 192–93, 250–52; and David R. Cameron, “The Hero in Rousseau’sPolitical Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984): 397–419.

77. Rousseau, “Parallèle de Socrate et de Caton,” in his Jean-Jacques entre Socrate etCaton, 48–56, citation at 53: “Si vous étes Philosophe, vivez comme Socrate, si vousn’étes qu’homme d’Etat vivez comme Caton.”


embodied the connection between virtue and action, and this percep-tion was to influence later revolutionary attitudes.78

In Emile (1762) there is a moment when Rousseau claims thatexcessive identification with historical figures is a danger to one’sself-identity, be they even Socrates or Cato.79 Yet that was only apassing cloud, and other praises of Cato in the book were typicallyunreserved.80 Most important is the digression in “The Profession ofFaith of the Savoyard Vicar,” in which the vicar, Rousseau’s mouth-piece, answered the question, “Why would I want to be Cato whotears out his entrails rather than Caesar triumphant?” The answerwas the appeal of beautiful heroism, an appeal that derives from thenatural human attraction toward selfless beautiful actions, actions thatgive charm to life. “Remove from our hearts this love of the beautiful,and you take all the charm out of life.”81

Rousseau’s most important laudations of Cato, however, occurredin Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), which Simon Schama has called“perhaps the most influential bad book ever written.”82 Julie recom-mends that her lover St. Preux emulate honorable, virtuous, and happyhistorical figures rather than vicious and miserable ones, not figureslike Caesar or Nero but rather like Regulus or “Cato tearing out hisentrails,” who had a “true felicity [la félicité réelle] that their apparentmisfortunes cover.” Furthermore, “if it is not a question of being eithera Cato or a Regulus, yet everyone must love his country, be uprightand courageous, hold to his faith, even at the expense of his life.”83

Cato became even more of an exemplum when his suicide was explicitlymentioned. St. Preux, in attempting to justify suicide to his friendMilord Edouard, argued that Plato’s Phaedo could contain no trulygood objection to suicide, since Cato had read the work twice the nighthe ended his own life. Rousseau’s hero addresses Cato in the typicallyhigh tone of the novel: “You who shared with the Gods the respect ofan astonished world, grand and divine Cato, you whose august and

78. Leduc-Fayette, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 53–69; see also Kelly, Rousseau’s ExemplaryLife, 21, 48–75, 192–93, 250–52.

79. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, ou de l’éducation, in his Oeuvres complètes, 4:535.80. Ibid., 4:342–43.81. Ibid., 4:596: “Pourquoi voudrois-je être Caton qui déchire ses entrailles, plutôt

que César triomphant? Otez de nos cœurs cet amour du beau, vous ôtez tout le charmede la vie.”

82. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 481.83. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse, in his Oeuvres complètes,

2:224: “Caton déchirant ses entrailles . . . la félicité réelle que couvroient leurs mauxapparens . . . S’il n’est pas question d’être un Caton ni un Regulus, chacun pourtantdoit aimer son pays, être intègre et courageux, tenir sa foi, même aux dépens de sa vie.”


sacred image animated the Romans with a saintly zeal and made theTyrants tremble, your proud admirers did not think that one day in adusty corner of a college, vile Rhetoricians would prove that you werenothing but a coward, for having refused to a lucky crime [au crimeheureux] the homage of virtue in chains.”84 Yet Rousseau found him-self here facing an obstruction, to again borrow Starobinski’s ter-minology. Rousseau’s feeling of inadequacy was highlighted by hisparagon Cato. This was apparent when Milord Edouard wrote backto St. Preux, reproving him for his reasons for wishing to commitsuicide; he cannot properly compare himself to the Romans, who usedto commit suicide for civic reasons and in order not to serve tyrants.Edouard was particularly angry over the comparison with Cato, ask-ing: “Did Cato tear out his entrails for his mistress? Small and feebleman, what is common between Cato and you? Show me the commonmeasure between that sublime soul and you. Rash man, oh be silent!I fear to profane his name by his vindication. At that holy and augustname, every friend of virtue must lay the forehead in the dust, andhonor in silence the memory of the greatest of men.”85 We can seehere how Rousseau’s writings on Cato had an influence that was notonly political. For Rousseau the personal and the social were inter-twined. He saw his own personal inner struggles as representing thehuman condition. His mortified identification with Cato, and specifi-cally his view that his novel’s hero was unworthy to end his life likeCato, emphasized the personal, not the collective, aspect of his thoughtand influence.86 The preoccupation with suicide was rapidly becominga European phenomenon, as Goethe’s Werther attested. More impor-tantly, for our purpose, we can see Rousseau’s direct influence regard-ing the combined consideration of suicide and Cato in the case ofAlexandr Nikolaevich Radishchev, the influential eighteenth-centuryRussian author. Radishchev himself committed suicide when he feared

84. Ibid., 2:381: “Toi qui partageois avec les Dieux les respects de la terre étonnée,grand et divin Caton, toi dont l’image auguste et sacrée animoit les Romains d’un saintzele et faisoit frémir les Tyrans, tes fiers admirateurs ne pensoient pas qu’un jour dansle coin poudreux d’un college, de vils Rhéteurs prouveroient que tu ne fus qu’unlâche, pour avoir refusé au crime heureux l’homage de la vertu dans les fers.”

85. Ibid., 2:391–92: “Caton dechira-t-il ses entrailles pour sa maitresse? Hommepetit et foible, qu’y a-t-il entre Caton et toi? Montre-moi la mesure commune de cetteame sublime et de la tienne. Téméraire, ah tai-toi! Je crains de profaner son nom parson apologie. A ce nom saint et auguste, tout ami de la vertu doit mettre le front dansla poussiere, et honorer en silence la mémoire du plus grand des hommes.”

86. For the claim that Rousseau identified with Cato because both were misfits incorrupted times, see Leduc-Fayette, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 53–69.


renewed persecution for his ideas. In his famous Journey from St. Peters-burg to Moscow (1790), he counseled his sons, whom he had raisedin an evidently Rousseauist fashion (at least in the book), to commitsuicide if they ever despaired of virtue in this world and to die, likeCato, their own masters.87 Elsewhere in the book he quoted a passageon the immortality of the soul from Addison’s Cato.88

This case helps us clarify the closing chapter in the development ofthe Catonic ideal in the eighteenth century. There was always some-thing of the personal, and an emphasis on the solitude of the individual,in the story of Cato. Yet hardly anyone, particularly in the eighteenthcentury, even Rousseau, seemed to emphasize this. Enlightenmentculture stressed the natural sociability of human beings. The idealsof toleration and of perfectibility did not consider people as specificindividuals. The dialectical tension in Rousseau and others inherentin the attempt to reconcile individuals with their social surroundingsreflected a key problem in what we, from our modern democratic per-spective, are used to calling the “Enlightenment Project.” One solution,which eventually won the day, was liberalism, which is in many waysthe opposite of classical republicanism. The latter stressed the ideal ofthe individual abnegating himself for the common good in an oppo-sitional self-assertion that grew in grandiloquence in proportion to itsimpracticality. Yet dialectically, the more emphatic was the act of self-sacrifice for the republic, the more it enhanced the uniqueness of theindividual hero. In the climate of the Enlightenment, when the notionof the innate superiority of the few was rapidly losing credence, therewas not such a great distance between an appreciation of the singu-larity of the outstanding hero and that of every human being. Anyonecould become a “hero,” as the commoners among the revolutionarieson both sides of the Atlantic knew. In that respect, liberalism andclassical republicanism paradoxically found common ground, and so,in this peculiar way, the Cato myth can be viewed as an early chapter inthe rise of democracy. In the past few decades the notion of a multi-plicity of Enlightenments, nationalistically or philosophically differ-entiated, moderate or radical, has become common among scholars,and the story of Cato in the eighteenth century seems to substantiate

87. Alexandr Nikolaevich Radishchev, A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,trans. Leo Wiener, ed. Roderick Page Thaler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1958), 19, 44, 91, 123. This refers to Plutarch, Lives, 8:405 (“Cato the Younger,”LXX), who relates that Cato, after examining the sword that had been taken from himfor fear he would kill himself and then returned upon his indignant insistence, said,“Now I am my own master.” Slightly later he stabbed himself with it.

88. Radishchev, Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, 91.


this multifariousness.89 Yet this story also points to a broad commondenominator among many of the eighteenth-century literati—an appre-ciation that the talented individual had the possibility, perhaps eventhe obligation, to fight for the common good, which was ultimatelyalso his or her own good. The precise nature of this struggle was apoint of contention, not the struggle itself.

In the nineteenth century the Cato legend lost much of its appeal.As Frank Turner has argued, the nineteenth-century quest for balanc-ing liberty with order and stability created a favorable view of Caesarand the fall of the Roman republic.90 The rehabilitation of Cato’simage had to wait for the beginning of the twentieth century,91 andit took the rise of Mussolini to prompt Ronald Syme to return to anapproach similar to that of the eighteenth century, as exemplified inhis more critical examination of Augustus.92 The demise of classicallearning in the past century has precluded any chance of Cato’s figureregaining its popularity or notoriety, no matter from which philo-sophical perspective. However, given our current geopolitical and cul-tural problems, it seems doubtful whether any type of suicidal mythcould be examined with circumspection or be useful.

89. For a succinct treatment of the multiplicity of Enlightenments, see Pocock, En-lightenments of Edward Gibbon, 7–9, 138–39. A different approach is found in JonathanIsrael, “Enlightenment! Which Enlightenment?” Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (2006):523–45. Studies that have established the notion of a radical Enlightenment are MargaretC. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (London:Allen & Unwin, 1981); Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Makingof Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford University Press, 2001), and Enlightenment Contested:Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670–1752 (Oxford University Press,2006).

90. Turner, “British Politics,” 247–57.91. See the sympathetic treatment of Cato in Oman, Seven Roman Statesmen, 204–33.92. Ronald Syme presents a relatively positive depiction of Cato, although empha-

sizing his impractical extremism, in The Roman Revolution (1939; repr., Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1966), 25–27, 34–35, 46, 48, 50, 57–58, 110. See also Turner, “BritishPolitics,” 259–61.

Cato the Younger in the Enlightenment

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