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 18th-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 18th
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 18th 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.
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