The Senate's Ashes - Cato Part 3
The Finale, in our series on Cato the Younger
This has been out for a little while, but in case you missed it - Cato III is live!
One of the reasons for the delay was I was consumed with the Cost of Glory Men’s Retreat:
It was a smash success, and thanks to all who came and made it happen. We had cold plunges, a ROMAN DINNER, formal debates about whether to Conquer Greenland, spontaneous poetry recitations, and many gut-check impromptu speaking situations. Most importantly, an amazingly accomplished and fun group of excellent men.
(BTW: Mark your calendar - we’re going to have the application/landing page for the 2025 GREECE RETREAT June 8th-15th live very soon. Feel free to send a note and let me know if you’re interested, but I’ll announce it in the newsletter as soon as it’s live).
Alright then, some thoughts on the Finale of Cato the Younger, part III:
In this episode:
The burning of the Senate house after Clodius' murder in 52 BCE
Cato's failed bid for consulship and his hardline stance against Caesar
The outbreak of civil war and Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon
Cato's final days and dramatic suicide
A tale of principle and paradox, Cato's resolute stand for Republican values helped precipitate its very downfall. His death at Utica - dramatic, philosophical, and on his own terms - marked not just the end of his life but symbolically, the end of the Roman Republic itself.
You can listen to the new Cato episode here:
Takeaways
For the full story, listen to the episode. But here are a couple of takeaways:
The Price of Unwavering Conviction
Cato's stance against Caesar showed both the power and peril of absolute conviction. When Pompey invited him to be an advisor, Cato's response showed his unbending nature: “in private, therefore, upon his invitation, I will be Pompey's counsellor, but in public, even without his invitation, I will certainly say what I think is best.”
This consistency earned universal respect. Caesar himself (!) said:
“O Cato, I begrudge thee thy death; for thou didst begrudge me the sparing of thy life”
But it was this very inflexibility that helped precipitate the crisis. Even Cicero criticized him for failing to adapt when circumstances demanded it, noting that “when affairs demanded that a man like him run for office, Cato refused to exert himself, or to try to win over the people by kindly intercourse.”
Leadership in Crisis
There's a fascinating shift in Cato's leadership style during his final days at Utica. After spending his career as the Senate's prophetic but ineffectual voice of doom, Cato then became then the man of regret, who covered his face and sobbed at the sight of dead Roman soldiers. He often seems like the plaything of fortune.
But when Cato was at Utica, suddenly we see him transform into something quite different. He is everywhere at once: negotiating with the 300 local Romans, calming the aggressive cavalry, reassuring nervous senators. Cato didn’t want to lead the Republican resistance’s doomed armies. But he knew exactly what to do when there were lives to be saved.
Every side considered him the most just man in the Republic, and held him in awesome reverence and faith. And thus he was able to be uniquely effective. By keeping calm and peacemaking, he may have saved literally thousands of lives.
Perhaps most poignantly, this effectiveness came precisely when Cato had already decided to die. Here’s Plutarch:
“for a long time, the man had determined to destroy himself, and he was undergoing dreadful toils and suffering anxiety and pain on behalf of others, that he might put them all in the way of safety before he took his leave of life.”
Perhaps Plutarch writes so disproportionately at length about Cato’s last days because he was aware of this ironic fact: the moment Cato stopped trying to save the Republic and focused instead on saving individual Romans, he achieved maybe his most admirable victory of leadership.
The universal acclaim he received in death - that "with one voice they called Cato their savior and benefactor" - suggests that his most meaningful legacy, in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, came not from his years of principled opposition, but from these final days of practical leadership in crisis.
What might have been possible if this more pragmatic version of Cato emerged earlier? Could the man who successfully mediated between bitter factions in Utica have found a way to bridge the divide between Caesar and Pompey before it was too late?
Stay tuned for the Aftermath episode, on the Immortal Cato.
So I've finally gotten to this, and the aftermath episode.
Just. Amazing. Work. Alex!
In aftermath episode, we learn that you're getting a number of key details from a trio of modern biographers, but what has to be said is that your narrative in these three episodes stands as perhaps the best popular-history recounting, and at a very detailed level, of the late Roman Republic. I have had high praise in the past for Tom Holland's Rubicon book on that score, but in some ways what you've done here is even better. You've gone down to granular detail of the political disputes and seasons, gone way beyond Holland in that, and that alone makes it very valuable--and despite all the detail, you maintain your flowing presentation throughout.
Yes, it would certainly be worth it to turn your scripts/transcripts into a text, sprinkling it with references (not all of 'em!), and making it into a book. I'd rush to buy it. Perhaps that book would also have your other lectures on late-Republic figures... Dunno. The only other set of your episodes I've listened to in full is the one on Marius, and that is tops, but this set takes things to a whole a new level. By reweaving into the life what one can learn from the more detailed ancient historians like Cassius Dio as well as whatever was pointed out to you by the modern biographers, we essentially get Plutarch's Cato, but with massive enrichment. Things in Plutarch's account which are unclear become clear, and Cato's story done in this detail winds up being, it appears to me, one that 90% coincides with most critical parts of the late Republican political story.
And your final judgments on Cato are wise and appreciated.
I am perhaps blinded by my own admiration for Caesar. Cato reminds me more of the senators in the US like Schumer, McConnell, Pelosi. He does not appear to be near as scummy as them but nonetheless he like them was willing to let the country erode as long as it kept them in power. Cato was not near prudent while a politician. Absolutely failing to have any pragmatism until it was clear events were beyond his control.
Im very on the side of the populist right so once again I acknowledge that the bias there could be blinding. He's an old school Republican in a time when the party needed to readapt/realign itself. Contributing to the failures today have McConnell very unpopular even in the party, Cato is in the similar boat.