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Cato, the Younger

 
             
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Marcus Porcius Cato "Uticensis" (also known as Cato the Younger) was many things, including the adamantine foe of the triumvirs Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus and the man whose undying enmity to Caesar in the Civil War led him to commit particularly violent suicide rather than give Caesar the pleasure of pardoning him in defeat. Austere, humorless, puritanical, incapable of compromise, he was a fanatic in defense of liberty and the Republic. Cato was deeply admired by Americans in the Revolutionary period; Addison's play Cato, in which Cato defies the tyrant Caesar in verse, was a favorite of George Washington. In his own time, while regarded as one of the greatest Romans, his implacable moral stands apparently stirred both reverence and exasperation:

" As for Cato, my affection for him is no less than yours; but even with the best will in the world, there are times when his high-mindedness is a positive danger to the state. He delivers opinions which would be more at home in the pages of Plato's Republic than among the dregs of Romulus here. "
Cicero, Letters to Atticus.


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