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.