Podcast Episode 39 - Stubborn Nags of Ancient Rome, Conclusion

Julius Caesar tried to paint Cato the Younger’s suicide as the depraved final act of a crazed fanatic.

In the triumph he celebrated after his victory over the last Republican holdouts in North Africa, he had paintings carried through the procession showing Cato “tearing open his own wound.” All this did was engender sympathy for Cato, who killed himself rather than submit to Rome’s new tyrant, who was granted a dictatorship of ten years.

The Republicans who had accepted clemency from Caesar now began to feel ashamed that they had taken the easy way out. Cato’s nephew Brutus divorced his wife without explanation and married Porcia, Cato’s daughter. He wrote a book about his uncle-turned-father-in-law, praising his steadfast commitment to Republican virtues.

Brutus even managed to persuade Cicero to write his own story of Cato, but his book focused on his old ally’s “personal virtue and steadfastness rather than his political career.” Cicero, typically, was afraid of offending Caesar. He had also known Cato at his best and worst, and likely didn’t want to rehash their shared history, which would remind everyone that Cicero caved to a dictator to save himself and Cato did not. He much preferred Cato as a symbol than a living, righteous man, who more often than not rebuked Cicero for his own lack of righteousness.

Even watered-down, these books about Cato were not good for Caesar’s regime. “Within months of his suicide, one of Caesar’s bitterest opponents was being held up as the ideal of aristocratic virtue in books which were openly circulated and widely praised.”

This is just the kind of thing that would not have been tolerated when Sulla was dictator. Maybe Julius Caesar really wasn’t the best at everything.

Sources

Addison, Joseph. “Cato A Tragedy.” Delhi Open Books, 2022.

Beard, Mary. “SPQR.” Profile Books, 2015.

Goldsworthy, Adrian. “Caesar: Life of a Colossus.” Yale University Press, 2008.

Goodman, Rob and Soni, Jimmy. “Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar.” St. Martin’s Press, 2012.

MountVernon.org. “Quotes from George Washington.” Retrieved March 30, 2022 from https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/quotes/article/gentlemen-you-will-permit-me-to-put-on-my-spectacles-for-i-have-grown-not-only-gray-but-almost-blind-in-the-service-of-my-country/

Podcast Episode 38 - Stubborn Nags of Ancient Rome, Part XIV

Julius Caesar was finally ready to put an end to that pesky civil war.

His best legions had mutinied while he was away in Egypt consorting with Queen Cleopatra. He had left Rome in the hands of less-capable surrogates for about a year, which gave the remaining Republican resistance time and space to fortify the North African city of Utica, under the careful management of Cato the Younger.

Caesar had had enough. It was time to finish this once and for all.

After winning the Battle of Thapsus, Julius Caesar entered Utica to find Cato already dead and buried. He said, “I begrudge you your death, just as you begrudged me the chance to spare your life.”

Even though he had ultimately won the civil war, Caesar knew that he had been beaten.

Eighteen centuries later, when George Washington huddled with his men at Valley Forge, knowing that they were all that stood between an American republic and subjugation by a king,  Cato the Younger was the example he followed.

In defying Julius Caesar, Cato the Younger played a big part in the birth of democracies centuries later. 

Sources

Beard, Mary. “SPQR.” Profile Books, 2015.

Goldsworthy, Adrian. “Caesar: Life of a Colossus.” Yale University Press, 2008.

Goodman, Rob and Soni, Jimmy. “Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar.” St. Martin’s Press, 2012.

Podcast Episode 037 - Stubborn Nags of Ancient Rome, Part XIII

The Roman Republic was making its last stand, but first it had to figure out who was in charge.

Not that it didn’t have bigger problems. Pompey the Great, thinking the civil war was over, failed to capitalize on his victory at the Battle of Dyrrhachium, allowing Julius Caesar all the time he needed to regroup so they could meet again at the Battle of Pharsalus in August of 48 BC.

Pompey did not win the Battle of Pharsalus.

After his crushing defeat, he retreated to Egypt, thinking he could get troops and money by picking a side in the ongoing incestuous power struggle between Cleopatra and her brother-husband, one of the last of the Ptolemaic kings. He picked the wrong side, and the Egyptians sent his severed head to Caesar, hoping that he would pick a side in the ongoing incestuous power struggle between Cleopatra and her brother-husband.

Julius Caesar would indeed pick a side, but that is a trainwreck for later.

He took some time off, managed to recover his mutinying legions, and headed for a final showdown in Africa.

Sources

Beard, Mary. “SPQR.” Profile Books, 2015.

Goldsworthy, Adrian. “Caesar: Life of a Colossus.” Yale University Press, 2008.

Goodman, Rob and Soni, Jimmy. “Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar.” St. Martin’s Press, 2012.