Cato, a Tragedy, Part VIII: “What If?” becomes “What Now?”

    Before getting into how the plot, characters, and message of Cato, a Tragedy figures into the American Revolution and potentially influenced some of its participants – which, you’ll recall, was supposed to be what this present series was about – a word or two remains to be said as to the significance of the thing itself. The two are related, which is why they are being addressed together, but one should most definitely be addressed before the other. What was Addison really trying to portray with Cato?” And, as a corollary, how did this figure into the American Revolution? In answer to the first question, the following hypothesis seems as likely as any. Given the political situation in Britain at the time that Addison first sat to pen his drama – with people being actively censured by the Tories in power for too avidly favoring the Hanoverian succession, a pretender to the throne waiting in the wings across the Channel with Louis XIV in his corner, and an army being increasingly purged of anti-Stuart elements – it would seem only natural for individuals of a Whiggish persuasion to have begun to feel some degree of despair. What were their chances, really, of seeing through the terms of the Act of Succession (1701)? What reason was there to assume that the impending death of Queen Anne wouldn’t give way to another civil war? If nothing else, the Whigs and their supporters were in need of something to rouse their spirits. But not, as conventional wisdom might suggest, a story about how everything would work out in the end if they all just held steady. No, that would surely have encouraged too many of them to become complacent. Rather, a story about loss – a tragedy, in fact – was the best possible answer. Show people what will happen if they fight and they lose. Make them fear such an outcome. Make them do anything to avoid it.

    This, arguably, is what Cato, a Tragedy is all about. It is the story, after all, of a civil war. Addison’s hero isn’t being hounded by some cruel foreign adversary, but by but one of his own countrymen. Indeed, by many of his own countrymen. Caesar is the presence whose shadow looms large over all that transpires, but it is Decius, one of Cato former colleagues, who delivers his tidings, and Sempronius, one of Cato supposed allies, who plots to defect to the side of the conqueror. The conflict at hand, as a result, is not one between strangers whose intentions are mutually unknown and unknowable, but rather between people of the same community and traditions. In spite of their common nationality, history, and at times even their common blood, however, these people – these Populares and these Optimates – are willing to kill each other over what is essentially a difference of opinion. People like Cato believe in the sanctity of the ancient Roman Constitution, the institutions that comprise it, and the customs that bound the lot of it together. People like Caesar, meanwhile, hold that the people themselves are the only true source of legitimate authority and that the institutions of the Roman Republic should be torn down or reformed if they obstruct the people’s prerogatives. While both Cato and Addison would claim that it does matter very much which of these perspectives is the correct one – and, in the end, which one succeeds over the other – they also do not shy away from acknowledging the tragedy inherent in such a disagreement ultimately coming to blows. Cato is most definitely willing to die for what he believes in, and in the end does die so as to rob his opponent of the triumph that would be his capture. But he also freely admits that the killing of Romans by other Romans would be a high price to pay even if victory were assured.

    At the time of Addison’s writing, of course, Britain was not in the midst of an out-and-out civil war. Queen Anne was still alive, the Act of Succession (1701) had yet to be either enacted or ignored, and the Whigs and the Tories were still just political adversaries. But what if this suddenly ceased to be the case? What if Queen Anne died unexpectedly in the wee hours of some midweek summer morning? What would the Whigs and the Tories become then? Partners, perhaps, in shepherding Great Britain through an uncertain period in its early history? Adversaries, perhaps, in promoting conflicting visions of what the relationship between Parliament and the Crown ought to look like going forward? Enemies, even, in securing the succession of their preferred heir to the throne and inaugurating a new era in British constitutional history? Any one of these outcomes was possible, if some were more than others. What Addison arguably tried to do with Cato was explore what might happen if the last of the three came to pass. What if Great Britain, like the ancient Roman Republic, was split asunder by a civil war? Bloodshed! Disaster! And what if the supporters of centralization won? Horror! Tragedy! Being shown such an outcome, who would not be moved? Witnessing the demise of such an honorable figure as Cato, who would not feel a weight upon their minds? Tories, certainly, and that rather goes without saying. But what good Whig could bear witness to such a noble sacrifice as that made by Addison’s Cato and not feel themselves bound to serve their chosen cause with greater passion? Who among them would not then resolve to give their all to prevent such a catastrophe from being visited upon themselves? Very few, Addison doubtless hoped. For preference, not a one.

    Thinking about Cato as a kind of speculative morality tale intended to shape the outcome of a potential civil war would seem to cast its popularity in Revolutionary America in a rather interesting light. Notwithstanding the fact that the Revolution did, ultimately, result in the creation of an American republic wholly and perpetually separate from Great Britain, the conflict more closely resembled a civil war in its earliest stages than a war of liberation. It was only after all hope of reconciliation had been exhausted in the hearts of the majority of the leadership of Congress – helped along, in large part, by George III’s Proclamation of Rebellion in August of 1775 – that the goal of the American revolutionaries became de jure independence. Prior to that, in the 1760s and early 1770s, the various disagreements, protests, and remonstrances that eventually set the wheels of separation in motion took place very much within the context of a conversation on the nature of the British Empire and British rights. What the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies seemed to want more than anything during this earlier period – prior to be labelled as criminals by their nominal sovereign, of course – was to be more thoroughly integrated into the legal framework of the British state. They fulfilled their share of responsibilities to the Crown – from paying taxes, to supplying troops, to obeying the commercial regulations which successive British governments deemed to be desirable – and in exchange felt themselves entitled to certain basic civil rights. If they were going to be taxed and required to risk their lives at Parliament’s behest, they thought it only reasonable that they should allowed to elect members to the same. The Bill of Rights (1689) guaranteed the rights of Parliament at the expense of the Crown, it was true, but what good were such guarantees if the right of the people were not also guaranteed at the expense of Parliament? Were the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies not citizens of the Crown? What did the guarantees enshrined in the Bill of Rights mean if moving physically beyond a certain boundary left one outside of their protections? No, the colonists adamantly concluded, if British citizenship mattered anywhere then British citizenship mattered everywhere.  

    Successive British governments, of course, rather vehemently disagreed. Whatever arguments there were to be made concerning the validity of British citizenship rights outside the boundaries of Britain proper – and there were, doubtless, a number – it was the concerted opinion of Whig and Tory administrations alike across the 1760s and 1770s that the demands put forward by various reform-minded groups of American colonists simply weren’t feasible. The distance between the Thirteen Colonies and London, for one thing, was simply too great, and the travel time too lengthy, to facilitate elections, constituency visits, or the calling of emergency sessions in anything like a reasonable fashion. House of Commons elections already took something on the order of a month to resolve. Adding travel time back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean at regular intervals to this timetable would surely have slowed down the business of Parliament to something approaching a snail’s pace. And for another thing, admitting that the American colonists had the right to be represented in Parliament because they were bound by its laws would doubtless have set a precedent to which Britain’s political class would have been loath to adhere. The Irish, for one, whose government was technically separate from that of Britain but functionally subordinate to the same, would have been able to make a much stronger case for either severing ties between the British Parliament and their own or allowing Irish MPs to sit in the British House of Commons. And then there was Canada, Britain’s expanding presence in India, the colonies in the Caribbean, and any other possessions which might be acquired in the future. Part of what allowed Britain’s global empire to function as it did as the 18^th century came to a close was that the bulk of decision-making was heavily centralized. Allowing the inhabitants of every far-flung colonial outpost – or even just the European-descended Protestants among them – to weigh in on how their resources were going to be disposed of and to what extent they were going to be taxed would surely have slowed the pace at which British authorities were able to act and rendered a distinct disadvantage as compared to Britain’s various imperial rivals.

    The disagreement at hand accordingly came down to a kind of standoff between moralism and pragmatism. The American colonists believed, the practical consequences notwithstanding, that if they were going to be taxed, they were entitled to representation; and unless they had representation, they should not be taxed. As commonly articulated, this was very much a moral stance. Recognizing the British citizenship of the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies was simply the right thing to do. British authorities, on the other hand, believed that the Empire functioned best as it was, and that granting representation in Parliament to distant populations would only end up hampering it prospects in the ongoing European contest for global commercial and military hegemony. What was right was certainly important, but not so much as what demonstrably worked. Granting that there was almost certainly no easy way to resolve this dispute – with people in the Thirteen Colonies and in Britain coming down on either side and there being no obvious means of securing mutual agreement – it would be difficult to imagine that anyone involved believed civil war to be the likeliest outcome. Domestic political conflict had given rise to armed conflict in the past, it was true. Indeed, between the Bishop’s War (1639-1640), the English Civil War (1642-1651), and the Glorious Revolution (1688-1689), the 17^th century had been a particularly tumultuous era in British history during which force of arms seemed to be the only means by which particularly sticky political conflicts were likely to get resolved. That said, the 18^th century had been comparatively quiescent. Even a dispute over something as fundamental as who should sit on the throne came to a peaceful resolution when the death of Queen Anne in 1714 was followed by the relatively uneventful ascension of George I. Why, then, should a disagreement over the payment of a few taxes result in anything more costly than a riot or two and a lot of fevered correspondence? Why should Addison’s prediction have finally come true in the 1770s if the circumstances which gave rise to it in the first place some sixty years prior did not succeed in producing such an outcome?

    While the reasons, in truth, are many, it will suffice for the present discussion to simply say that it did. In consequence, whereas a member of Addison’s intended audience was apt to read Cato, a Tragedy as a cautionary tale – in a “there-but-for-the-grace-of-God” kind of way, ultimately – an American colonist living in the middle 1770s was much likelier to view the conflict described therein as a close reflection of the struggle that was beginning to take shape around them. The result, arguably, would seem to be a crucial alteration in the drama’s apparent emphasis. In 1712, Addison had seemingly been asking of his fellow Whigs what they would do if something like that which he depicted – i.e. a civil war resulting in the erosion of public virtue – came to pass. Or, perhaps more to the point, what would they be willing to do to prevent it? In 1775, however, an American reader of Addison – who nevertheless also thought of themselves as a Whig in good standing – would surely be presented with a different set of questions. For them, it would not be a matter of “what if?” but “what now?” Not a question of prevention, but of response.

    As to what, specifically, an American colonist in the 1770s might have seen when they either read or took in a performance of Addison’s Cato, the way that the intended Whig/Tory dynamic likely mapped onto their present context carries with it some interesting implications.    Granting that the individual in question was as incensed by the behavior of the government of Lord North (1732-1792) in particular as Addison seemed to be by the actions of Tories like Harley and Bolingbroke, they were most likely to see in the titular Cato and his followers a manifestation of their own values and struggles as they were then playing out. Like the Whigs of Addison’s day, the American Whigs of the 1770s – as they had indeed come to be known – were a community defined by their adherence to a particular brand of British constitutionalism wherein the supreme authority of Parliament was directly tied to its ability to represent the people to whom the laws it created directly applied. And like the Optimates to which Cato ostensibly belonged, the American Whigs also valued consistent adherence to established procedure. Addison’s hero, recall, wasn’t necessarily bothered by the notion that Caesar sought to use the military resources at his disposal to achieve a particular objective. Conquest, after all, was what had given rise to and long sustained his beloved Roman Republic. Rather, it was that Caesar was exercising military authority outside of – and in opposition to – the legitimate dictates of the Senate. Just so, it wasn’t just that Parliament was levying taxes upon the American colonists that so profoundly aroused the ire of the latter. The duties in question were, in practice, rather slight, and hardly represented much a burden on the colonial economy. It was that successive majorities in Parliament had decided to recognize the rights of British citizenship on what was essentially a selective basis. Those citizens who lived in Britain proper could count on being at least nominally represented in the body whose privilege it was to determine which of their private monies they owed to the Treasury. But for those who had relocated to distant climes within the Empire, or whose parents, or grandparents, or distant ancestors had done so, this was not to be the case. They were to be taxed without even so much as the illusion of having a say in the matter. Not only was this arrangement fundamentally unjust, but it was also – horror of horrors – highly irregular.

    It would seem to make perfect sense, then, for an American Whig to see their values and their struggles closely reflected in those of Cato and his followers. Cato was not a traitor, regardless of what Caesar’s messenger Decius argued in an attempt to goad him into surrendering. Though Caesar had Rome itself, most of the legions, a good portion of the Senate, and probably most of his fellow countrymen on his side, he could not claim legitimacy in the eyes of one such as Cato. On the contrary, it was Caesar who was the traitor; Caesar who had betrayed the basic values of the Roman Republic; and Caesar who would be held responsible for destroying what he claimed to love. Cato may have been isolated, exiled from the halls of power, and possessed of only the slimmest chance of success, but he knew that he was fighting for what was good, and right, and true. An American Whig, circa 1775, would doubtless have taken solace in such a pathetically heroic depiction. They were being accused, in that moment, by their countrymen of insurrection. They had been told by Parliament, by the Crown, by their supposed compatriots in Britain, and by certain of their neighbors in the Thirteen Colonies that they had strayed from the path of the law-abiding and were venturing dangerously close to treason and rebellion. But did they bend? Did they surrender to the urgings of the powerful and the numerous? No. Like Cato, his allies, and his children, they refused. For they knew, as Addison’s hero knew, that material circumstances – wealth, power, military might, etc. – could not change truth into falsehood or falsehood into truth. The American Whigs knew it for a fact that they were right, and like Cato they would hold out no matter how desperate their cause became.

Cato, a Tragedy, Part VII: “He Knows Not How to Wink at Human Frailty,” contd.

    As written by Addison, Cato is right – and, perhaps more to the point, convincing – when he speaks and as to what he speaks. Caesar has killed an alarming number of his own countrymen simply to avoid being held to account by the Senate. And men like Decius have, despite their claims, been overawed by Caesar’s military success into disregarding Roman law and Roman custom. Is the soul of the Republic as stainless as Cato describes? Not at all. It was a general in service of the Roman Republic who destroyed the city of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War (149-146 BC), slaughtered most of its inhabitants, and sold what little remained into slavery. And it was in the name of saving the Roman Republic from populist perversions of its constitution that the aforementioned Sulla had some nine thousand of his fellow Romans executed in 81 BC. But while Cato may be guilty of ignoring these crimes, that is arguably the full extent of his misdeeds. His personal reputation is as near to spotless as a human being might conceivably hope to come. When offered chances to personally enrich himself, he rejected them. When confronted by the efforts of powerful figures like Caesar and Pompey to stretch the limits of the Roman Constitution to suit their desires, he sought to frustrate them as best he could. The Roman Republic may not be all that he claims, but if any man was entitled to stand in judgement of the deeds of his countrymen – and to judge when those deeds had become improper or injurious – it is most definitely Cato the Younger.  

    Three more incidents from within Addison’s portrayal of Cato would seem to stand out as further evidence of the character’s superhumanly stoic persona. The first is when he is confronted by a band of mutinying soldiers. The second is when he is confronted by the death of his son, Marcus. The third is when he determines to take his own life. Approaching them in order, the disgruntled soldiers, spurred on by Sempronius, make their approach to Addison’s erstwhile hero in Act III, Scene 2. Intent, it would seem, on capturing their nominal commander and delivering him to Caesar in exchange for some manner of reward, they are stopped in their tracks when Cato proceeds to berate them for falsely claiming to be aggrieved. “Perfidious men!” he begins,

            And will you thus dishonour

            Your past exploits, and sully all your wars?

            […]

            Which of you suspects that he is wrong’d,

            Or thinks he suffers greater ills than Cato?

            Am I distinguished from you but by toils,

            Superior toils, and heavier weight of cares?

            Painful pre-eminence!

As the mutineers steadily wither, Cato details yet more the full extent of their self-centered shortsightedness. “Who was the first to explore th’ untrodden path,” he asks,

            When life was hazarded in ev’ry step?

            Or, fainting in the long laborious march,

            When, on the banks of an unlook’d-for stream,

            You sunk the river with repeated draughts,

            Who was the last of all your host who thirsted?

    Any other man, one imagines, when confronted by such a revolt in the midst of his own attempt to offer armed resistance to a militarily superior foe would, in the best case scenario, perhaps attempt to fight his way clear and then withdraw to safer environs. And in the worst case, he might be entirely forgiven for choosing to surrender rather than risk his own death. Cato, of course, can do neither of these things. If he fears for his life, he does not show it. If he has plans for escape, he does not enact them. Rather, with swords very likely held to his throat, he turns squarely to face his foes and proceeds to batter them into submission with words. “How could you behave in this way when you have thus far acted with such honor and integrity?” he says. “How could you claim that I am causing you to suffer when you have seen me suffering this whole time at your side?” he says. “When you were marching in the desert, was I not leading the way? When we slaked our thirst at long last, did I not wait my turn until you all had had your fill?” Cato clearly benefits from the fact that he is the kind of leader who would not ask his men to do anything that he would not actively partake of himself. The soldiers camped at Utica know this for a fact, have seen it themselves, and react with an appropriate degree of shame at being thus reminded. But Cato is also fortunate to possess the kind of constitution that does not so much as blink at the sight of unsheathed steel. Soldiers approach him; they mean to deliver him to Caesar. His response? Not to run. Not to fight. Not even to give in. He looks these men in the eye, and he reminds them to whom they are speaking. It is a brave man indeed who attempts such a thing, and a penetratingly confident man who actually succeeds.

    When Cato is next encountered, in Act IV, Scene 2, it is in the midst of the tumult surrounding the aforementioned death of young Marcus. Syphax attempts to flee the camp – wishing to escape the fate which befell his co-conspirator, Sempronius – Marcus offers resistance, and the two men essentially kill each other. But when Portius returns bearing the news to his father, and then when Marcus’s body is actually brought forward, Cato’s response is…unusual, to say the least. Not only does he seem to wish that he could join his son – not take his place, mind you, but join him in such a noble demise – but he then takes the opportunity to both mourn the destruction of his beloved Roman Republic and to deliver a series of lectures to his remaining son as to the kind of life he should lead thereafter. On the first count, Cato is about as emotional as Addison ever presents him. After first seeking to redirect the tears which his friends might feel compelled to shed for Marcus to instead shed them for Rome – “Let not a private loss / Afflict your hearts [,]” he says – he then holds forth as to what he actually fears has been lost. “The mistress of the world,” he calls his benighted homeland,

The seat of empire,

The nurse of heroes, the delight of gods,

That humbled the proud tyrants of the earth,

And set the nations free; Rome is no more.

Oh, liberty! Oh, virtue! Oh, my country!

Laying aside the claim that Rome ever set anyone free, this passage would seem to make it abundantly clear that Cato’s love for his country runs very deep indeed. The death of his son may have prompted the outburst, but the attention of this great man is now entirely focused on the sorry state of his homeland. One can only hope Marcus knew his father well enough to expect this kind of response, and that Portius does not shudder to think how his own death might be greeted in turn. Perhaps seeking to dispel exactly this anxiety, Cato commanded but a moment before that Portius, “Behold thy brother, and remember, / Thy life is not thy own when Roman demands it.” Having just that moment lost one of his sons in service to Rome, Cato cannot seem to refrain from reminding the other that he expects much the same from him if the circumstances should demand it. Begging forgiveness for alluding to another piece of literature entirely, one is very much reminded of a scene from Homer’s Iliad. When Prince Hector is killed by Achilles during the lengthy siege of the city of Troy, King Priam personally begs the legendary warrior to return the body of his son so that he might be properly buried and mourned. So distraught is the King of Troy, so shorn of his pride, that he even kisses the hands of Achilles in order to show how far his is willing to humble himself in exchange for this single favor. It is a deeply moving scene, and one which does have the desired effect on Achilles. Cato, of course, does not need to beg for the return of his son’s body. Marcus is brought to him almost as soon as he is cut down. All the same, the difference between his reaction and that of Priam is striking. The King of Troy is devastated by the loss of his son, to the point where he is willing to risk his life, dispenses with the dignity of his office, and prostrates himself at the feet of Hector’s killer. Cato, by contrast, expresses a kind of jealousy, remarks to his remaining son that he requires nothing less from him, and only then begins to mourn, albeit for his country. Priam, it seems, though little more than a legend, behaves very much like a man. While Cato, it seems, though absolutely a man, behaves much more like a legendary figure.

Cato’s implacable façade breaks down somewhat as Act IV, Scene 2 goes on, though he never again so much as speaks the name of his slain son. Conversing with his fellow Senator, Lucius, and his daughter’s suitor, Prince Juba – presumably as the body of Marcus lays moldering hard by – the great man’s resolve seems to steadily erode as he laments the state of his country and the depths to which Caesar has dragged it. His thoughts, it seems, have turned to his friends, his family, their fates, and his own. Lucius characteristically advises asking Caesar for mercy. Cato begs them ask for it on their own behalf, if indeed it can be had, and place all their supposed crimes on him. Juba makes clear his utter devotion to Cato, and his refusal to abandon his patron. Cato expresses his gratitude, and while he is not sure whether Juba should return to his native Numidia or submit to Caesar, he knows that greatness awaits one so pure in spirit. And then, unsolicited, Addison’s hero turns his attention to Portius. Having suffered long and seemingly for naught, and with one son dead and the other standing before him waiting to be told what to do, Cato seemingly endeavors to save what little he has left. “Let me advise thee to retreat betimes,” he says,

To thy paternal seat, the Sabine field;

Where the great Censor toil’d with his own hands,

And all our frugal ancestors were bless’d

In humble virtues, and a rural life;

There live retired, pray for the peace of Rome;

Content thyself to be obscurely good.

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,

The post of honour is a private station.

    The “Sabine field,” for the record, refers to the Sabine Hills, a region in central Italy from which Cato’s ancestors presumably hailed. And “the great Censor” was Cato’s great-grandfather, Cato the Elder (234-149 BC), a statesmen, historian, soldier, and farmer who became renowned in later life for his rural asceticism and his utter contempt for all manner of luxury. By invoking these things, Cato seems intent on mingling images of simplicity and isolation with notions of tradition and honor. “Yes,” he essentially admits, “Our efforts to oppose Caesar have more or less failed. But take heart. A man may still live a life of virtue – as our great forebearer once did – by scorning all ostentation, self-exiling in some rural commune, and embracing a life of peace and integrity.” Doubtless, this might seem like something of a retreat for Cato, a man who but lately demanded that Caesar disband his legions and submit himself to the Senate for judgement. That said, the fact of it is not in the least bit difficult to understand. Caesar has succeeded, at Pharsalus and at Thapsus. Pompey is dead. His successor, Metullus Scipio, is dead. Cicero has abandoned the Optimates and gone back to Rome. And now Cato’s own son, Marcus, has been slain. Is it any wonder that the great man should feel as though there is no longer any point to fighting? He told Lucius, in Act II, Scene 1, not to give in until the very last moment. Is this not the last moment? Should Cato not, now, advise his son to go off someplace quiet to live a life of honorable obscurity? Granted, it is still a little strange that this conversation – in which Cato advises his friends and family each in turn how they should dispose of themselves – takes place while Marcus’s body yet lies right there in front of him. One might reasonably expect a few tears from a bereaved father, or a perhaps a protest to the Gods that they should have taken one so young, but no. This exchange presents Cato at perhaps his most despairing and his most vulnerable, but not necessarily at his most human.

    Cato’s final scene, in which he commits to killing himself and then does so, represents something of a return to the character’s accustomed stoicism after the comparative melodrama of Act IV. As Act V opens, Addison’s hero is alone in his chambers, deep in thought. A sword lies on a table nearby, and Cato holds a copy of a book by Greek philosopher Plato (424-348 BC) in his hand. The book is called Phaedo and concerns the supposedly immortality of the soul. Cato is contemplating its contents. “Plato,” he remarks,

        Thou reason’st well—

         […]

        Why shrinks the soul

        Back on herself, and startles at destruction?

        ‘Tis the divinity that stirs within us;

        ‘Tis Heav’n itself that points out an hereafter,

        And intimates eternity to man.

A dry observation, to be sure, for a man who has just lost his son and lately despaired of losing more, though there is also some sense to it. If Addison, through Cato, intends to castigate his Tory opponents by way of pointing up their supposed obsession with material comfort, calling attention to the comparative value of the immaterial – a principle as significant in 18^th-century Christianity as it was in the cosmologies of men like Plato and Cato – would seem a potentially effective approach. If Caesar, in the context of Addison’s drama, is so fixated on the notion of accruing and wielding power that he is willing to break every law and cast aside every tradition, then it would seem a natural development that Cato should choose the opposite tack by rejecting the material world itself.

    Not only does this position represent an intellectual denial of everything that Caesar stands for – i.e. mastery of the physical world – but it also seems to offer the increasingly exhausted Cato a way of defying a reality which he has come to despise. “This world was made for Caesar [,]” he laments, in a continuation of his soliloquy on the nature of the immortal soul, “I’m weary of conjectures—this must end them.” As Cato proceeds to lay his hand upon the aforementioned sword, he continues:

            Thus am I doubly arm’d: my death and life,

            My bane and antidote, are both before me.

            This in a moment brings me to an end;

            But this informs me I shall never die.

            The soul, secured in her existence, smiles

            At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.

While the “bane and antidote” to which Cato here refers were likely intended by Addison to allude to the sword his hero grasps with one hand and the book he holds in the other, it may also have been the case that the unsheathed blade stood in for both. As wielded by Caesar, the blade was indeed the bane of Cato’s existence. With it, the conqueror had laid waste to the Roman Republic to which Cato had dedicated his life in service, and all in the name of self-glorification. As wielded by Cato, however, the blade will accomplish the opposite. At a stroke, it will free a man’s immortal soul from his earthly self, his desires, and his torments, and make him something more than what he was. Caesar, with all every blade in Rome at his command and arms enough to swing them, cannot even hope to catch a glimpse of such an achievement. It is entirely beyond him.

    Heroic though Cato seeks to portray his chosen fate, however, he also admits that what it represents is a form of escape. He grows weary of the struggle against Caesar and his legions as the events of the play proceed from Act I though Act IV. Between wrangling with his fellow Senators, talking down attempted mutineers, and witnessing the death of his son, one is scarcely given to wonder. By the time he makes his appearance in Act V, Addison’s hero is so worn down that he seems to feel as though existence itself is dragging at his body. “What means this heaviness, that hangs upon me?” he asks himself. “This lethargy that creeps though all my senses?” When Portius proceeds to interrupt his father’s grim reflections – seeking, by his own admission, to prevent the great man from doing something rash – Cato attempts to conceal his intentions in the guise of hope, though his meaning remains clear enough to the audience. “Now, Caesar,” he says,

            Let thy troops beset out gates,

            And bar each avenue; thy gath’ring fleets

            O’erspread the sea, and stop up ev’ry port;

            Cato shall open to himself a passage,

            And mock thy hopes.—

Yes, Cato aims to defeat Caesar, to rob him of the only thing that force of arms cannot gain him. He had said to Decius in Act II, Scene 1 that he would disdain a life which Caesar held the power to offer, and so he is intent on making good his promise. But he also simply wants out. He has fought long and hard for a losing cause, sacrificing a great deal in the process, and now seeks little more than to rest. Appropriately enough, among his dying declarations are the words, “I’m sick to death—Oh, when shall I get loose / From this vain world, th’abode of guilt and sorrow!” While Cato the Younger thus dies having never compromised, never surrendered, never given his enemy the satisfaction of granting him mercy, he also dies, to some extent, broken. He was, as Portius eulogizes thereafter, too good for this world of, “Fraud, and cruelty, and strife [.]” He could not survive in it ere long, and mankind is yet worse off for his loss.

    While the weariness and despair with which Addison chooses to characterize Cato in his final moments assuredly does much to humanize his hero, there would still seem to be no question at all as to the fundamentally idealistic nature of the portrayal more generally. Cato does not, cannot, represent a real person in the ways that Sempronius, Marcus, and Portius arguably do. Not only is he too stoic, as a rule, to function as a stand-in for any of the leaders of the contemporary Whigs, but his attitudes towards the significance of his own life and the manner in which it ought to be disposed have almost nothing to do with 18^th century English social mores. At the time that Addison was writing, men did not despair of being captured by their enemies in war and seek to rob them of their victory by committing suicide. Nor did men cut short their lives so as to save themselves the indignity if having to compromise on a matter of politics. Attitudes had changed, it is true, since the era of the Renaissance as to the nature the act itself –from suicide as grounds for damnation to it being a legitimate means to escape from torment – and many scholars of the Enlightenment had developed a degree of admiration for the ancient Roman concept of patriotic suicide. That said, virtually no one among Addison’s intended audience would have either expected it or required it of soldiers or statesmen that they take their own lives as a point of honor rather than suffer some manner of disgrace. It simply wasn’t done.

    What kind of protagonist was Addison attempting to draw? What was his purpose? In light of the manifest inhumanity which Cato demonstrates across the length of the tragedy which bears his name – inspiring though it often may be – and recalling the dearth of any figures in contemporary British political life that even came close in terms of temper or behavior, there only seems to be one answer to these questions. Cato was the kind of protagonist that Addison believed his country needed. Consider, to that end, the following. The Whigs, circa 1712, were not monarchists, per se. Many of them, it is true, did believe that the monarchy could and should fulfill a useful purpose within the framework of the British Constitution, but they did not hold with ideas like the so-called “divine right.” A king, they believed, was a potentially beneficial thing, but under no circumstances was it a sacred thing. Parliament could depose them, appoint them, increase their powers, or reduce them; as the situation called for it, that was what should be done. The Tories, traditionally speaking, took rather the opposite approach. Even if they no longer believed in the absolute power of the monarchy, they much more closely identified with the concepts, trappings, and implications of monarchical power.

    What this all meant, in practice, is that while the Tories had an individual – in the form of the aforementioned James Frances Edward Stuart – around which they could rally without in the least appearing to violate their principles, the Whigs were not so lucky. Not only did they lack strong, singular leadership at the time of Addison’s writing – instead investing power in the hands of a cabal of statesmen known as “the Junta” – but their emphasis on the collective authority of Parliament tended to grind against the very concept of idolization. Bearing this in mind – and recalling that George of Hanover would have made for a poor sort of symbol anyway – the likes of Joseph Addison doubtless felt as though some kind of heroic presence was wanting. Not in the form of a living person, mind, who would be vulnerable to all the faults and foibles of humanity, but a combination of historical icon and fictional character. Someone with a reputation, founded in fact, for integrity, virtue, and selflessness, but who could be made to speak and to behave as the situation required. Enter: Cato the Younger, a man whose dedication to law and public service were well known in 18^th century Britain, and who, in the hands of Joseph Addison, would never disappoint those who would come to herald him as a symbol. He would be better than they could ever hope to be – more stoic, more virtuous, less prone to temptation. He would never lust after distinction, or let his ambition cloud his better judgement. And while, in the end, he would not succeed in turning back his opponents, his death would endeavor to be as inspiring as any victory.

    One of the consequences of creating a hero as impossibly virtuous as Cato, of course, is a tacit admission of the impossibility of human perfection. Cato may appear human, and from time to time may even express a very human sense of vulnerability, but he is definitely more god than man. Addison himself seems to admit as much by having certain characters make remarks to that exact effect. Lucia, for example, when speaking with Marcia as the latter’s father lies contemplating his mortality in the next room, says that,

Cato is stern and awful as a god;

He knows not how to wink at human frailty,

Or pardon weakness that he never felt.

Marcia naturally rises to her father’s defense, arguing that while he is, “Stern and awful to the foes of Rome [,]” Cato remains, “Compassionate and gentle to his friends [.]” A moment later, however, Lucius seems to second his daughter’s pronouncement. Returning from Cato’s chambers, his fellow Senator remarks to Marcia, “I have seen thy godlike father! / Some power invisible supports his soul, / And bears it up in all its wonted greatness.” When even a close friend and compatriot of Cato thinks him “godlike,” and that same friend’s daughter says he is “stern,” “awful,” and wholly lacking in human weakness, the message which the audience is supposed to take away would seem quite clear. Cato is not someone whom his admirers – fictional or otherwise – should ever realistically hope to emulate. He is too idealized, too perfect, too lacking in faults or foibles. But one should most definitely try. Try to be better, to exercise restraint, to master one’s impulses. Try to create a more fair and just society. The Tories need never have bothered with such things, their ideal being the affirmation of a model of government whose roots lay in the Middle Ages. No point in trying to create something new when what you’ve got works just fine, and so forth. But this was not the Whig ideal. Perfection, to them, may not have been possible, but that didn’t mean that the effort wasn’t worthwhile in itself. Cato was arguably Addison’s attempt to personify this same concept, and Cato, his tragic exploration of sacrifice in the name of one’s highest ideal.      

Cato, a Tragedy, Part VI: “He Knows Not How to Wink at Human Frailty”

    Having herein described certain aspects of Addison’s hero more than once, and cited choice quotations by way of his response to other characters, it would now seem to prudent to finally discuss Cato directly. What kind of protagonist was Addison attempting to draw? What were his virtues? His vices? His purpose? As argued previously, Cato would seem not to have had a parallel in contemporary British political life. He was not a stand-in for George of Hannover in the way that Caesar was arguably a stand-in for James Stuart. Nor did he seem to represent any the contemporary Whigs in particular, that role being left to his various children. Rather, he seemed to be something of a cipher. Not a nonentity in the conventional sense of the term, but a figure who resembles a living human being in only the most basic sense. He has children, yes, and friends, and he hopes, and even despairs, at times, for the fate of his country. But his responses tend to be something more – or perhaps less – than human. Cato never shows fear, even when confronted by mutinous soldiers. He bids his children to willingly give their lives in service of Rome, and sheds nary a tear when his son Marcus does exactly that. And in the end, when all hope seems lost and the forces of Caesar draw ever nearer his camp, he determines that the best course of action is to deny Caesar the privilege, by way of suicide, of pardoning one of his most ardent opponents. These, taken together, are not the actions of a normal, fallible, relatable human being. They are rather the actions of a paragon; someone from whom people will feel compelled to draw inspiration while knowing for a certainty that they will never measure up. Cato is virtue, in Addison’s hands, and doubtless this is exactly what Addison intended.

    Not every line that Cato speaks in the drama that bears his name is as impossibly virtuous as his most memorable quotations, of course. His introduction, for example, in Act II, Scene I, mostly just shows him playing the part of moderator between Sempronius and Lucius. The former, as previously discussed, gestures at outrage, and calls for revenge upon Caesar. The latter, being far more earnest, laments the destruction that has so far accompanied the Roman civil war, and begs his colleagues to consider laying down their arms and leaving things in the hands of the fates. Cato, for his part, strikes a balance between these two extremes. While he claims to find Lucius’s diffidence unbecoming, he, too, is deeply troubled by the slaughter that has accompanied Caesar’s rise to power. And though he thinks Sempronius to be overly zealous in seeking a confrontation, he nevertheless seems to agree that the deaths of so many worthy Romans at Caesar’s hands should not simply be forgotten. Patience, he accordingly counsels to both men in turn. Hold fast, summon a modicum of courage, and wait for the moment that truly demands decision. Unsurprisingly – dramatic conventions being what they are – this is almost exactly the instant in which Addison introduces just that. A messenger arrives bearing word from Caesar to Cato. His name is Decius. Cato knows him and trusts him. He has come to ask for Cato’s surrender.

    The situation that Cato finds himself in changes rather drastically, it bears noting, with the sudden introduction of Decius. A moment prior, the senators assembled in Utica were attempting to determine how they should proceed in spite of a relative dearth of information. They don’t know where Caesar is, or what he intends. They don’t know if that have months to prepare for the next engagement, or mere hours. For his part, Cato seemed to understand very keenly what Caesar had done thus far. It is a matter of some anguish to him, in fact. But he does not attempt to guess at what he might do next. This, indeed, is rather the crux of his position. While Caesar remains distant, and while Utica remains in the hands of what was left of the Optimates, there is still reason to hope that all is not yet lost. “‘Twill never be too late [,]” Cato avows, “To sue for chains, and own a conqueror.” But then, quite unexpectedly, Decius arrives with an offer that is both simple and unmistakable. Surrender to Caesar, he says, and all will be forgiven. In that moment all the uncertainty vanishes, and Cato’s choice is clear. Surrender, or resist. Live, or risk death. Cato’s response essentially forms the first line of Addison’s thesis – namely, that virtue often requires a person to rise above human frailty, though the reward for such efforts very often entail further suffering.

    Cato does not waste time in making plain the depths of his disdain for what Caesar has done and for what Decius offers. To the messenger’s simple greeting – “Caesar sends health to Cato” – Cato responds, “Could he send it / To Cato’s slaughter’d friends, it would be welcome.” Thus are Caesar’s crimes – lately discussed by what remains of the Roman Senate – foregrounded once more, both for the audience and for Caesar’s chosen agent. But while Decius proceeds with his assigned task as though undaunted, Cato maintains a distinctly confrontational attitude. Not only, it seems, is he intent on refusing Caesar’s offer, but he wants it known to all concerned that he did not so much as contemplate accepting for even an instant. When told that Caesar, seeing the dire straits to which Cato has been driven, fears for Cato’s safety and wishes to spare him harm, Cato answers accordingly. “My life is grafted on the fate of Rome [,]” he says.

Would he save Cato, bid him spare his country.

Tell your dictator this; and tell him, Cato

Disdains a life which he has power to offer.

Decius, to his credit, again appears untouched by this response, though it would seem cast the whole purpose of his errand in doubt. Caesar wants to save Cato’s life, for whatever reason and to whatever end. Cato claims that he will live and die with the Republic. Caesar wishes to pardon Cato for taking up arms against him. Cato avows that a life which may be spared by Caesar is not one which he would deign to live. Caesar’s offer, by way of Decius, is supposed to appeal to Cato’s fear, his anxiety, and his sense of self-preservation. But Cato, as written by Addison, cannot be reached in these places. He does not fear death. Indeed, he does not seem to fear much of anything.

    The one thing which Cato might actually be afraid of only becomes evident as his conversation with Decius continues. Told, by the former, that,

            Caesar is well acquainted with your virtues,

            And therefore sets this value on your life.

            Let him but know the price of Cato’s friendship,

            And name your terms [,]

Cato’s response is tellingly blunt. “Bid him [,]” he says,

            Disband his legions,

            Restore the commonwealth to liberty,

            Submit his actions to the public censure,

            And stand the judgement of a Roman senate.

            Bid him do this, and Cato is his friend.

Having said all of this – and doubtless in earnest, for Cato is never anything less than earnest – Addison’s hero must nevertheless be aware of the fact that what he asks is impossible. If Caesar was willing to submit himself to the judgement of the Senate, he would not have felt the need to raise an army and march on Rome in the first place. But while the reaction of Decius would seem to be appropriately dismissive – “Cato,” he says, “The world talks loudly of your wisdom” – Cato continues quite unheeded in the same guileless tone as before. “Nay, more,” he says,

            Though Cato’s voice was ne’er employ’d

            To clear the guilty, and to varnish crimes,

            Myself will mount the rostrum in his favour,

            And strive to gain his pardon from the people.

    What is arguably revealed by this exchange between Cato and Decius is the thing that Cato most disdains about Caesar. It isn’t just that Caesar has laid waste to the Roman Republic or put the sword to an alarming number of his countrymen. Nor is it that he has brought low some of Rome’s greatest living statesmen and soldiers. Certainly, Cato is bothered by these things, and says as much, but they are clearly not what’s animating him in this moment. Rather, it’s that Caesar has done all of these things in pursuit of personal ambition. This is something which Cato evidently abhors most of all. His life, he says, is grafted to the fate of Rome. He lives for the Republic, serves it in every capacity that he can, and would prefer to perish with it if perish it must. To act as Caesar acts – to hold his person and his fortunes above everything else in the world – is thus anathema to Cato’s very being. Not only does he reject the notion, but he rejects even being associated with those who hold it paramount. Caesar would spare his life, seemingly asking nothing in return but Cato’s surrender, but even this is too much for Cato to accept. To live in a world where Caesar’s ambition is the guiding light? To agree, if only tacitly, that such a man holds the power of life and death, guilt and innocence, in his hands? Cato would not stand for it. He would fear to live that life; to sanction that behavior; to betray himself and his honor so completely.

    As to what Cato holds dear, beyond his own sense of self-respect, his exchange with Decius reveals that as well. Asked what price Caesar would need to pay for Cato’s friendship, Cato’s answer is essentially a paean to the institutions of the Roman Republic. He wants Caesar to disband his legions, as he was commanded to do 49 BC, restore the government of the Republic, and submit himself to the judgment of the Senate. Do that, Cato declares, and he will defend Caesar’s actions himself, though it has never been his custom to defend someone he knows to be guilty. Reading these words, one is reminded of the events of the Catiline Conspiracy (63 BC), during which Caesar himself implored his fellow Senators not to pass a death sentence on a group accused of plotting the overthrow of the Roman Republic. At the time, Caesar seemed to believe that it was more important to follow the custom of merely exiling Roman citizens accused of treason than to give in to the passions of the moment and break with tradition. The sanctity of Roman justice was evidently more important to him in those days than the severity of the crimes that the accused men had supposedly committed. This, as Addison writes him, is Cato all over. His sense of honor – perhaps like Caesar’s in 63 BC – is almost completely bound up in the institutions, procedures, and practices of the Roman Republic. What gives him comfort is to see men beholden to the laws of Rome. What makes his life feel as though it is worth living is to enforce and defend the basic tenets of the Roman constitution. So long as a man will submit himself to the mechanisms of the Roman state – and, in turn, to the ideals which they claim to uphold – then it matters not what crimes he has committed. Cato will defend him, and in so doing defend the Roman Republic itself.

    As the exchange between Cato and Decius continues, Addison further develops his hero’s sense of honor by way of an argument about the very nature of what is right. Responding to Cato’s rather stark ultimatum – that Caesar lay down his arms, submit to the justice of the Senate, etc. – Decius disapprovingly observes that, “A style like this becomes a conqueror.” Evidently Caesar’s messenger has no sense of irony at all, and genuinely sees Cato’s moral rectitude as a kind of tyranny in itself. But Cato does not chuckle, or even attempt a cutting riposte. As ever, he is purest sincerity. “Decius,” he says, “A style like this becomes a Roman.” “What is a Roman,” Decius counters, “That is Caesar’s foe?” “Greater than Caesar [,]” Cato responds, “He’s a friend to virtue.” Doubtless frustrated by this back-and-forth, Decius makes a final attempt at forcing Cato to face reality. “Consider,” he says,

            You’re in Utica,

            And at the head of your own little senate:

            You do not thunder in the capitol,

            With all the mouths of Rome to second you.

Cato, as it happens, does not need reminding where he is or why he has been driven there. On the contrary, he is acutely aware of his circumstances and utterly resolved that he has chosen the correct path. “‘Tis Caesar’s sword has made Rome’s senate little,” he avows,

            And thinn’d its ranks. Alas! thy dazzled eye

            Beholds this man in a false and glaring light,

            Which conquest and success have thrown upon him;

            […]

            I know thou look’st on me as on a wretch

            Beset with ills, and cover’d with misfortunes;

            But, by the gods I swear, millions of worlds

            Should never buy me to be like that Caesar.

    The position herein adopted by Decius is many ways a combination of those given voice by Sempronius and Lucius. Like the latter, Decius is more or less resigned to Caesar’s victory, and believes offering further resistance to be somewhat graceless. But like the former, Decius also seems to look up to power. The fates have favored Caesar, to be sure, in battle after battle, but so have many of the Roman elites. He may not have Cato the Younger as a friend and supporter, but he has Rome itself, and the Forum, all of Italy, all of Greece – all the trappings of legitimacy, in essence. Far more than Cato, in the eyes of Decius, Caesar looks as though he has the right to decide the fate of the Republic. To be Roman, then, to his thinking, is to be a friend of Caesar. And to be a friend of Caesar is to be a good Roman. Not only is this a very practical outlook, but it is also undeniably logical.

    Cato will have none of this, of course, his personal conception of “Roman-ness” having a very different foundation. Whereas Decius seems to identify the essence of Rome as being most closely related to power, Cato conversely relates it to the notion of virtue. Rome, to him, is justice, law, tradition, and restraint. It is magistrates, and trials, and elections, and assemblies. Far from embracing conquest as the truest source of legitimacy, Cato thereby favors procedure. Victory in battle does not interest him, especially when the victims are his fellow countrymen. Why should he respect a man who has made himself the master of Rome by tearing Rome apart? Why should he allow himself to be dazzled by the glare of Caesar’s victories when he knows at what cost these victories were gained? Caesar does not care for the things that have made Rome something that Cato loves. For this reason, no matter what the master of Decius might claim to achieve, or how outwardly pathetic Cato’s situation might become, he will never be won, or swayed, or cajoled in this way.

    In truth, of course, there is more to what Decius is arguing that Cato would care to admit. The Roman Republic, as Cato knew it, was built on a series of conquests which steadily expanded the territory under the control of a single city in central Italy across Spain, North Africa, Greece, and Southern France, resulting in untold destruction and loss of life, the enslavement of countless men, women, and children, and the enrichment and glorification of generations of soldiers, statesmen, and merchants. Not only that, but the specific era in which Cato lived – the “late Republic,” as it were, from about 140-48 BC – was notorious for the extent to which corruption and political violence had become the norm, military strongmen rose to positions of unparalleled power and influence, and conflicts between competing power brokers more than once devolved into civil war. This was the age of slave uprisings, the public lynching of the populist Gracchus bothers, Tiberius (163-133 BC) and Gaius (154-121 BC), the rise of ambitious reformer Gaius Marius (157-86 BC), his fall at the hands of arch-traditionalist Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78), the failed conspiracy of the aforementioned Cataline (108-62 BC), and the creation of the informal, extralegal cabal known as the First Triumvirate. A man who served in the Roman Senate at nearly any point during this period would be hard pressed to claim that the republic which they served was a paragon of justice, temperance, or virtue.

    Recall, to that end, that Cato’s own faction, the Optimates, had been at the peak of its power under Sulla, a man who used the authority granted him as Dictator in 81 BC to strip the popular assemblies of much of their influence and summarily execute hundreds of his political opponents. And consider, as well, that this same party’s nominal leader at the time of Caesar’s march on Rome in 49 BC was none other than Pompey the Great (106-48 BC), a man who first rose to prominence as one of Sulla’s lieutenants and made a name for himself as a fabulously successful general who laid waste to entire nations during his campaigns in the Near East. Cato naturally would have taken pains to distance himself from some of these things. Political violence was plainly not to his liking, and he would doubtless have spoken against its use even when it was directed at people – like the Gracchi and their followers or the supporters of Gaius Marius – whose beliefs he considered to be dangerous to the integrity of the Roman state. And while he did not appear to disdain the idea of taking up arms for one’s country, he was not one to equate military glory with political influence. Unlike Caesar, whose path to power led straight through the barracks, Cato most assuredly favored the traditional approach to  public service whereby men gathered prestige and experience over a course of many years spent occupying many official positions until finally ascending to the office of Consul. Again, his love of procedure should be kept very much in mind. All that said, however, it would be patently inaccurate to claim that Cato did not savor Rome’s preeminent position in the ancient world. He took no issue with the conquest and enslavement of foreign kingdoms and foreign peoples and seemed to hold no reservations about embracing a warmonger like Pompey the Great when the circumstances seemed to demand it. Does all of this serve to make Cato something of a hypocrite? Yes, in truth, it rather does. Does this necessarily rob Cato’s arguments of their intended moral force? No, in point of fact, it rather doesn’t.

Cato, a Tragedy, Part V: Friends, Children, Countrymen…

            In the dramatic context of Cato, a Tragedy, the hero’s other children, Portius and Marcia, serve much the same purpose as their doomed brother, Marcus. That is, they function effectively as stand-ins for Addison’s fellow Whigs. They are, between them, less anguished then Marcus, and by extension much surer of what they believe to be their duty. But their function, by and large, remains the same. They are not perfect, like Cato is – not lacking in human weakness – but still very resolute, and stoic, and noble.

Portius, for his part, is the more sober component of the dyad he forms with his brother. Where Marcus is often portrayed as a roiling cauldron of emotions, Portius is always calm, and steady, and patient. He hears out his brother’s expressions of grief, offers gentle counsel as best he can, and more than once goes so far as to lament that he cannot lesson the pain that Marcus is feeling. The resulting dynamic is rather like a person at odds with themself. Marcus is all uncertainty, confusion, and pain; Portius is tranquility, equanimity, and peace. They converse with one another, hashing out their fears and hopes, and come always to the conclusion that it is their father to whom they owe their fealty. While Marcia functionally stands apart from this pairing – having only brief interactions with Portius and none with Marcus – she nonetheless forms a kind of tertiary complement. Like Portius, she is very clam, and reserved, and stoic – very much her father’s daughter. And like Marcus, her principle attachment within the context of the play is romantic in nature – i.e. her deeply felt but unexpressed attraction to Prince Juba. But like neither of Cato’s other children, Marcia is a woman. By the standards of the Roman antiquity – and by those of Addison’s own 18^th century – she should accordingly be a kind of soft, yielding creature whose emotions must always rule her reason. As Addison writes her, however, she is anything but. Driven to the fringes of the Roman world, faced with the looming threat of Caesar’s arrival, and constantly pursued by a handsome foreign prince who ardently desires her and for whom she possesses a similar depth of feeling, Marcia is nevertheless unfailingly adamant that her first duty is to her father. The situation at hand, she declares, does not admit of the weaknesses brought on by love. And so, while she may indeed desire Juba as deeply as he does her, she must remain aloof. Thus, it would seem, Addison attempts to paint the rather striking image of a woman showing greater fortitude and forbearance than any number of men. The reason? The thing she believes in most: Cato.

None of this is to say, mind, that Cato’s other children don’t also struggle. Portius, as aforementioned, is deeply troubled by the knowledge that the object of his and Marcus’s shared affection, Lucia, loves him and loves Marcus not. And Marcia most definitely feels a profound and abiding attraction to Prince Juba, elsewise she would not be so resolute in her rejection of his interest. But in both cases, time and again, these two of Cato the Younger’s three offspring rise above the pangs of heartache and desire in service of the cause to which they feel most strongly bound. Portius, in this mode, is most definitely the principle heir and chief aspirant to his father’s reputation. Whereas Marcus seeks to make the crimes of Caesar personal, and would seem to desire revenge on the man himself, Portius, by contrast, is more measured in his response. Caesar’s success is nothing to be jealous of, he says in Act 1. “‘Tis an impious greatness, / And mix’d with too much horror to be envied [.]” Far from being a hero – or even being worthy of a modicum of respect – Caesar is in fact nothing more than ambition run amok, dressed in pomp, and glutted on military glory. Cato, Portius reminds his brother, is a better man, and his achievements shine the brighter for his having to suffer to achieve them. The conclusion which the audience is supposed to draw from this exchange? Success is no measure of greatness. That, and the best revenge is living well. Portius does not want his brother is sink into a rage over the misdeeds of Caesar. He wants Marcus to be better than Caesar. To act with more forbearance than Caesar. To be, in a word, Cato-esque.

Marcia, within her own particular sphere of action, proves no less resolute or restrained than her brother. Her principle interactions, as aforementioned, are with her friend, Lucia, and her aspiring suitor, Prince Juba, and in either context she maintains a degree of firmness and fortitude that makes only limited allowance for the traditional expectations of her gender. In Act 1, for example, when she and Lucia are approached by Juba after the latter’s conversation with his aid, Syphax, Marcia responds to his ardent affections with a sense of reserve almost verging on patrician hauteur. She’s not displeased to be in his presence, nor unsolicitous of his efforts on her father’s behalf. But always she maintains a discreet emotional distance. When Juba declares that the sight of her causes him, “For a while to forget th’ approach of Caesar [,]” Marcia answers that, “I should be grieved, young prince, to think my presence / Unbent your thoughts, and slacken’d  them to arms [.]” When Juba counters that quite the opposite is true, that the memory of her “kind concerns” will, “Give new vigour to my arm, / And strength and weight to my descending sword [,]” she attempts again to defuse his ardor. “My pray’rs and wishes always shall attend [,]” she says, “The friends of Rome, the glorious cause of virtue, / And men approved of by the gods and Cato.” Particularly by invoking the name of her father, Marcia thus foregrounds her emotional priorities. Juba, to be sure, is important to her, but not more so than Rome, virtue, or Cato.

While Juba, depicted by Addison as a guileless and glad-hearted youth, takes these gentle admonitions in good humor, Marcia’s companion Lucia is comparatively nonplussed. Upon Juba’s departure – to marshal his troops, he says, “And fire their languid souls with Cato’s virtue” – she immediately turns upon her friend with questions her motives and intentions. “Marcia,” she begins,

You’re too severe;

How could you chide the young good-natured prince,

And drive him from you with so stern an air,

A prince that loves, and dotes on you to death?

Marcia’s answer more or less encapsulates the whole of her character. It isn’t that she finds Juba unattractive, she tells Lucia. “His air, his voice, his looks, and honest soul, / Speak all so movingly in his behalf” she thus admits. Rather, it’s precisely because she finds herself drawn to the young prince that she must endeavor to keep him at a distance. When Lucia furthers questions this reasoning – “Why will you fights against so sweet a passion, / And steel your heart to such a world of charms?” – Marcia very tellingly elaborates. “How, Lucia!” she reproves her friend,

            Wouldst thou have me sink away

            In pleasing dreams, and lose myself in love,

            When ev’ry moment Cato’s life’s at stake?

            Caesar comes arm’d with terror and revenge,

            And aims his thunder at my father’s head.

            Should not the sad occasion swallow up

            My other cares?

Thus, in but the span of a few lines, the daughter of Cato shows herself to be the better of either her suitors. While Juba, though pure of heart, finds that the thought of Marcia causes him to forget the threat that Caesar yet represents, Marcia will not allow herself the same. The threat that Caesar presents to her father is foremost on her mind. And while Sempronius – as previously established – seems to care for little else but his own pleasure, ease, and advantage, the object of his desire makes a point of denying herself things she admits that she wants because the circumstances demand she do so. Thus characterized, not only is Addison’s Marcia a good woman, but she is also a good Whig: reserved, self-effacing, and altruistic. As he would have his audience believe that Cato’s daughter would never act out of selfish intent, so he would desire them to understand that his fellow Whigs were similarly virtuous. 

            For what remains of their appearances in Addison’s Cato, Portius and Marcus carry on very much as they are established in Act 1. Portius struggles somewhat, it is true, when Marcus asks him to speak to Lucia on his behalf, and again when Lucia determines (albeit briefly) to forsake their relationship so as to spare her suitor’s feelings. But in almost every other case, he is the very picture of firmness, selflessness, and compassion. Granted, his emotions run over the walls of his reason to some extent at the very end of the piece when his father’s evident despair causes him to worry that Cato might attempt something drastic. But when Cato does then mortally wound himself, Portius bears up under the sorrow and delivers the kind of pointed eulogy of which his father would doubtless have approved. Marcia likewise experiences a personal trial in the midst of the foreground action of the play and passes through it no less unscathed than her brother. When, in Act 4, she comes across the body of Sempronius just moments after he is cut down by Juba and surmises from his Numidian garb that it is in fact the prince’s corpse that lies before her, she finally allows herself to express the full extent of her affections. “Oh, he was all made up of love and charms!” she declares,

            Whatever maid could wish, or man admire:

            Delight of every eye; when he appear’d,

            A secret pleasure gladden’d all that saw him [.]

Juba, of course, is alive and well, and when he approaches a moment later and reveals himself to the benighted Marcia, she finds she lacks the strength or the will to take back what her young suitor has just overhead. “I’ve been surprised [,]” she laments,

In an unguarded hour,

But must not go back; the love, that lay

Half smother’d in my breast, has broke through all

Its weak restraints, and burns in its full lustre.

I cannot, if I would, conceal it from thee.

But while this admission might seem to reduce Marcia to the more traditional role of lovesick damsel, her actions in Act 5 belie such any such assumption.

Despite having freely admitted her feelings for Juba, Marcia’s attention remains solely focused on her father when his moment of crisis finally arrives. Informed by her brother, Portius, that Cato, though dispirited, may yet choose to endure rather than, “Cast away a life / So needful to us all, and to his country [,]” Marcia’s response is the very epitome of filial concern. “Oh, ye immortal powers, that guard the just,” she prays,

Watch round his couch, and soften his repose,

Banish his sorrows, and becalm his soul

With easy dreams; remember his virtues,

And show mankind that goodness is your care!

Not only is Cato’s daughter still resolutely devoted to her father when her devotion is what he seems to need the most – and notwithstanding her recent confession of love to another man entirely – but her loyalty remains couched in the context of virtue and nobility. She does not ask the “immortal powers” to protect Cato simply because he is her father, but rather because it is a part of their purpose to “guard the just.” Her desire is not just that the fates spare her the sorrow of losing a beloved parent, but that they “show mankind that goodness is your care [.]” Saving Cato, she seems to feel, is as much in the interest of humanity as it is to the benefit of herself and her brother. The human race will benefit from Cato’s survival, perhaps even more so than might Marcia or Portius.

            Again, Addison’s purpose with this kind of characterization would seem to be quite plain. Like Marcus, both Portius and Marcia are forced to surmount personal hardship – or reconcile personal conflict – in order to render service to a purported greater good. Portius shoulders the burden of being a cause of his brother’s anguish, and suffers the death of that same brother, without once ever faltering in his service to Cato. And though Marcia grapples with the denial, seeming loss, and acceptance of her heart’s delight, her final loyalty is likewise paid to her father. Neither of them struggles as much as Marcus, it is true. They both seemed to have inherited a greater share of Cato’s habitual stoicism than their brother. But they do struggle. And through it all, they never lose sight of what matters most. Not their own happiness, ease, or comfort, but the good that might be done by and in service to their father. This, Addison most definitely desired his audience to understand, was the Whig way of doing things. Whigs didn’t jockey for place like Tories, seeking self-gratification at the expense of the public good. They felt the same pangs of desire, or lust, or greed as everyone else, but Whigs were supposed to overcome their base desires. They lived in service of a higher cause, for Britain, its people, and their rights in Parliament. It was for this reason that Addison felt the Whigs could – and should – be trusted to guide Great Britain through the period set to follow the looming demise of the increasingly infirm Queen Anne. Being supporters of the Act of Settlement (1701), they sought only an orderly succession that sustained the authority of Parliament. If they happened to benefit in the process, it was of no consequence. Unlike their Tory rivals, they had been prepared to suffer just as well.

            Not everyone in contemporary Britain would have been as willing as Joseph Addison made himself out to be to sacrifice their all on behalf of a Hannoverian succession, of course. Doubtless there existed, beyond the ranks of the dedicated Whigs and the dyed-in-the-wool Tories, a significant number of people who found the very idea of civil conflict distasteful, and would accordingly have favored some manner of accommodation between the supporters of Sophia of Hanover and those of the Stuart pretender. As it happened, Addison saw fit to give voice to this perspective as well, specifically in the form of Cato’s friend and colleague, Lucius. Like Sempronius, Lucius is also a Senator who presumably fled Rome along with the Optimates and survived a number of engagements with Caesar’s forces only to find himself effectively exiled to provincial Africa. And, also like Sempronius, Lucius harbors grave doubts as to the wisdom of Cato’s continued campaign of resistance. The principle difference between these two figures is that while Sempronius mingles his doubt with ambition, playing at loyalty while plotting betrayal, Lucius is always very forthright as to the nature of his anxiety. That, and he does actually seem to value Cato’s wisdom. Notwithstanding the fact that his default position seems to be one of resignation, Lucius often allows himself to be convinced by Cato to hold out a little longer.

            Though Addison most assuredly intended for his audience to ultimately disagree with Lucius – indeed, to find him overly yielding – he is hardly an unsympathetic character. When first he speaks, though it is to advocate for making peace with Caesar, the sentiments he expresses are deeply compassionate. Whereas, in the gathering of Cato’s ragged Senate at the beginning of Act 2, Sempronius (falsely) calls for revenge, and Cato counsels perseverance, Lucius has seemingly had all his resolve worn away by the suffering he has lately witnessed. “Already [,]” he laments,

            Have our quarrels fill’d the world

            With widows, and with orphans: Scythia mourns

            Our guilty wars, and earth’s remotest regions

            Lie half unpeopled by the feuds of Rome:

            ‘Tis time to sheathe the sword, and spare mankind.

As when the Tories sought to extract Great Britain from the War of the Spanish Succession so as to spare additional lives and resources, there is nothing the least bit dishonorable in intentions such as these. On the contrary, Lucius shows far more sensitivity than most of this fellow Romans ever would to the harm that their country has visited on the world at large. Romans have killed Romans, it is true, to which both Sempronius and Cato react with horror. But the Romans have also drawn any number of other peoples into the ongoing civil conflict – Juba and his fellow Numidians being but one among many – and the fact that Lucius points this out as a reason to seek a compromise with Caesar speaks very well of his character. Less admirable, however, is the sentiment which he thereafter goes on to express.

            Having eloquently conveyed his grief over the suffering that the ongoing civil war has wrought upon the world, Lucius next attempts to drive home the justice of his intentions by way of reference to the seeming improbability that further suffering will achieve any further effect. “We took up arms,” he notes,

Not to revenge ourselves,

            But to free the commonwealth; when this end fails,

            Arms have no further use. Our county’s cause,

            That drew our swords, now wrests them from our hands.

            And bids us not to delight in Roman blood,

            Unprofitably shed.

Again, there is much to what Lucius is saying. If the Optimates initially took up arms for the purpose of opposing Caesar and preserving the laws and traditions of the Roman Republic, and if there is no longer any reason to hope that what remains of the Optimates might possibly succeed, then why, indeed, should they continue to resist? What more could possibly come from refusing to bend the knee to Caesar but the slaughter of yet more Romans at the hands of other Romans? There would seem to be, as Lucius says, no profit in such things. Better to accept defeat, avoid further bloodshed, and begin the process of repairing the breach that has lately torn the republic apart. At least, that’s one way to look at it. A perfectly valid way, on its face. But what of those who have already perished? What was it they fought for? For what cause were they willing to die?

            Questions such as these hint at the more troubling aspect of Lucius’s plea for reconciliation. His desire to prevent further bloodshed is most certainly an admirable one, but in fixating on the harm that has been done as a result of the ongoing civil war – and the harm that may yet be done – he seems to have forgotten what the conflict is really about. The people who gave their lives at Pharsalus and Thapsus did so because they believed that Caesar’s flagrant disregard for the laws and customs of the Roman Republic represented something far worse than the potential of their own demise. Caesar was a tyrant in the making, they resolved, and so Caesar must be opposed. But while these men failed in their own right to prevent Caesar from marching onward to a personal triumph over the institutions of the Roman state, and while Lucius was almost certainly correct in his assessment that hastening to join them would likely achieve very little, the stance that Lucius seeks to advocate is nonetheless difficult to credit for its evident – if quiet – selfishness. Men have died for something in which Lucius presumably also believes, but he is not willing to risk death himself? He is not willing to make the same sacrifice that other men willingly made on his behalf? If Lucius were a real person rather than a character in a play, this would be an eminently forgivable sentiment. Volunteering for death is an extraordinary thing, and not something which ought to be expected of anyone as a given. But Lucius is a fictional character, whose intentions and actions are supposed to be judged by an audience in order to derive some meaning or significance. Bearing that in mind, there would seem to be no reason to doubt that Addison intended Lucius’s plea for an end to hostilities to be received somewhat harshly.

            Consider, to that end, the conclusion which Lucius offers before once more ceding the floor to Cato. “What men could do,” he says, “Is done already; Heav’n and earth will witness, / If Rome must fall, that we are innocent.” Notwithstanding the very cogent points that Lucius has made thus far, there would seem to be a rather distasteful quality of moral abdication in a sentiment such as this. The Optimates – or what remains of them, at any rate – have done all that they can for Rome. If Caesar succeeds in toppling the republic and placing himself in a position of perpetual and limitless authority, those who resisted and failed may therefore absolve themselves of any blame. They tried, Lucius is saying, and having failed, should have the grace to finally admit defeat. Again, where he a man, Lucius might easily be forgiven for preferring life to death. But as a player in a play, he functions rather as the embodiment of the submissive aspect of conciliation against which Cato must then stand in contrast.

Not only, as Addison’s hero goes on to explain, does he disagree with Lucius’s assessment of their prospects – “I cannot see that our affairs / Are grown thus desp’rate [,]” he thus observes, for, “We have bulwarks round us; / Within our walls are troops inured to toil / In Afric’s heat, and season’d to the sun [.]” But Cato also finds fault with the logic which Lucius seems intent on deploying. “Why should Rome fall a moment ere her time?” he asks accordingly.

            No, let us draw her term of freedom out

            In its full strength, and spin it to the last,

            So we shall gain still one day’s liberty [.]

Thus, by way of pointed opposition, the implication of Lucius’s plea is made clear. He has witnessed a great deal of suffering in a very short time and would seek to prevent any further loss of life if it is at all within his power. But in order to spare himself – and, to his credit, doubtless many others – he is willing to give up something very precious indeed. And since it is this precious thing – the “freedom of Rome,” as it were – for which those who have died did die, Cato cannot see why it should be given up while there are still yet battles to fight. Addison does not have his hero castigate Lucius, call him a coward, or encourage him to surrender to Caesar himself. He seems to desire that his audience still view the man with some degree of sympathy. But Lucius does very much lose this particular argument to Cato. Lucius is compassionate, a man of insight and sensitivity, but he too easily allows his abhorrence of suffering to cloud his judgement. When the thing at stake is as precious as the freedom of one’s country, both Cato and Addison would each have their audiences believe that the least one can do is suffer in order to protect it.

             While Lucius is ultimately convinced by Cato to refrain from giving in to Caesar just yet – “We all go in to your opinion [,]” he eventually declares, “Cato’s behaviour has convinced the Senate / We ought to hold it out till terms arrive” – and while his presence in what remains of the play is comparatively quite limited, he does still continue in the role of sympathetic conciliator. When Cato is confronted by a group of mutinous soldiers spurred to action by Sempronius in Act 3, Scene II and manages to talk them down by appealing to their sense of shame, it is Lucius who counsels mercy. In Act 4, Scene II, when Cato expresses a degree of weariness after being told that Marcus is about to cross swords with the fleeing Syphax, it is Lucius who advises him that surrender is still an option. “The victor never will impose on Cato / Ungen’rous terms [,]” he thus beseeches his friend. “His enemies confess / The virtues of humanity are Caesar’s.” And when Cato at long last gives vent to real anguish – “How is the toil of fate, the work of ages, / The Roman empire, fall’n! Oh, cursed ambition!” – Lucius is right there at his elbow making the same plea as before. “’Tis time thou saved thyself and us [,]” he says. “Caesar has mercy, if we ask it of him.” Even at the finale, Act 5, as Cato in the next room prepares to end his own life rather than give in to Caesar, Lucius still holds out hope that he might convince his friend to see the wisdom of capitulation. “Caesar is still disposed to give us terms,” he thus counsels Marcia, “And waits at distance, till he hears from Cato.” 

In the end, as he lays dying, Cato seems to encapsulate the conclusion which Addison desires his audience to draw. “Oh, Lucius, are thou here?” the former manages to gasp as his family and his allies gather round his bedside. “Thou art too good— / Let this our friendship live between our children [.]” On the one hand, Cato is conscious to the very last that Lucius is perhaps too kind, too forgiving, and too permissive for his own good. He is not a bad person, by any stretch, but his abiding desire to avoid all manner of suffering sometimes leads him to make bad decisions. And yet, on the other hand, Cato still very much values his friendship with Lucius, and would see it live on in the union of Cato’s son Portius and Lucius’s daughter Lucia. In this way does Addison make Cato that much more impressive – he is wise enough to see the faults in those he calls friend and yet also patient enough to embrace them all the same – while also making clear a central tenet of his basic thesis. Those who waver – who at times seem to value material comfort over principle – ought not to be shunned out of hand. Though they are sometimes willing to permit things by which they will suffer in the long term, their hearts are often as not in the right place when they do so. Rather, take them by the hand, be patient, and try to lead them down the righteous path. This is what Cato did with Lucius almost to the moment of the former’s death, and this is doubtless what Addison hoped the diehard Whigs in his audience would do for their less resolute associates. Perhaps they thought it foolish to drag Britain into a civil war so that a German prince might one day take the throne. Indeed, this would not have amounted to an unreasonable position. But if they could just be convinced that the German prince was beside the point – that the question at hand concerned rather the fate of Parliament itself – then that might make all the difference. Their support, that is to say, might make all the difference.