character for unflinching resolution in the cause of the ancient free state rendered him a valuable instrument in the hands of the nobles, perplexed as they were by the open hostility of Caesar and the oppressive patronage of Pompeius and Crassus. They were the better disposed, perhaps, to make use of^himfrom the oddity of his unpractical temper, which made it the easier for them occasionally to dis claim and repudiate his assistance. They did not, in deed, find him so complacent a dupe as Cicero, nor did they treat him more faithfully. They thrust him into the snare prepared for him by the triumvirs, and let him be sent on a mission of gross injustice towards the king of Cyprus, which his pedantic loyalty to the state forbade him to refuse. He continued to struggle against the combined powers of the triumvirs in the city, and became involved in scenes of violence and riot, while desperately resisting the superior force of their turbulent adherents. He suc ceeded, however, in obtaining the proetorship in 54, in which office he strenuously exerted himself in the hope less and thankless task of suppressing bribery, in which all parties were equally interested. Resolved not to stoop to such practices himself, he failed to attain the con sulship ; and he had made up his mind to retire from the
arena of civic ambition when the civil war broke out in 49.Cato had now persuaded himself that the sole chance for the free state lay in conceding an actual supremacy to Pompeius. Accordingly he did not scruple to support the unjust measures of the nobles against Ctesar, which gave too fair a colour to the invasion of Italy. Cato was, indeed, little prepared for his commander s flight across the Adriatic, and the surrender of the city, the government, and therewith the ostensible right, to the victorious rebel. Though he followed Pompeius to Epirus he found little satisfaction in his camp, where the fugitives were loudly threatening a bloody vengeance on their enemies. He excused himself from accompanying the forces of the Senate into Thessaly, by which he escaped being present at the battle of Pharsalia. After that great disaster, when his chief had abandoned his party and provided only for him self, he too felt at liberty to separate himself from the main body of the republicans, and conducted a small remnant of their forces into Africa. His march through the deserts of Libya gained him immortal glory. The struggle between the senate and Caesar was renewed in the African province. Cato shut himself up in Utica, and prepared to defend it as the most important post for communication with Italy. The battle of Thapsus, and the total rout of the senatorial forces, now threw upon him the whole weight of maintaining a cause which had become evidently desperate. The people of the place were anxious to make terms with the victor ; but he would not trust the Iloman citizens and soldiers to the clemency of the heir of Marius. Hitherto the civil wars of Rome had been con tinually marked by bloody retaliation ; even if Caesar himself were disposed to mercy he might not be able to restrain the violence of his allies ; and it was rumoured that terrible execution had been inflicted upon the captives of the last battle. Accordingly Cato determined to keep the gates closed till he had sent his adherents off by sea. While the embarkation was in progress his own demeanour continued calm and dignified. He supped familiarly with his friends, discoursing with them, as was his wont, on philosophical topics. On being informed that the last of the transports had left the port he cheerfully dismissed his attendants, and soon afterwards stabbed himself on his couch. Assistance was promptly offered, but he refused to avail himself of it, and so perished, much, it may be said, to his own fame, but with little advantage to his country (46 B.C.)
Cato had been reading, we are told, in his last moments Plato s dialogue on The Immortality of the Soul, but it is not likely that the Stoic, with his keen and rigid logic, put much faith in the vague aspirations of the idealist of Academus. His own philosophy had taught him to act upon a narrow sense of immediate duty without regard to future con tingencies. He conceived that he was placed in the world to play an active part, marked out by circumstances, and when disabled from carrying out his principles, to retire gravely from it. He had lived for the free state, and it now seemed his duty to perish with it. Caesar had slain the commonwealth ; it never occurred to him that Caesar himself was mortal, and that the commonwealth might live again. Had he condescended to ask his life, the conquerors would have been proud to grant it ; in two years more he might have been the survivor, for he was hardly yet fifty years of age, and might have formed a rallying point for the few devoted spirits, though few indeed they were, who really cared for freedom. Cato has left perhaps, from the cir cumstances of his life and of his death, the most marked name in the history of Roman philosophy, but he was a student, possibly a dreamer only, composed no works, and bequeathed to posterity no other instruction than that of his example. The memory of his career proved indeed fruitful. The school of the Stoics, which took a leading part in the history of Rome under the earlier emperors, looked to him as its saint and patron. It continued to wage war against the empire, hardly less openly than Cato himself, for two centuries, till at last it became actually seated on the im perial throne in the person of Marcus Aurelius.
CATO, Dionysius, a name concerning which it is doubtful whether it be the name of the author, or merely part of the title, of the Dionysii Catonis Disticha de Moribus ad Filium, a email work, consisting of moral apophthegms, chiefly in hexameters. The name usually given is simply Cato, but Dionysius is added on the authority of a MS. declared by Scaliger to be of great antiquity. Other titles by which the book is known are Cato Moralissimus and Cato, Carmen de Moribus. The latter is also the title of a work by the famous M. Cato the elder ; but extracts given from this by Aulus Gellius prove that it was in prose. The authorship of the Disticha has been ascribed to a large number of persons, including Seneca and Boetius, but in truth we know nothing of the writer, or of the exact time when it was written. The style is generally pure, and the existence of occasional corruptions argues little against its antiquity, since interpo lations have certainly been made, and not improbably emen dations attempted. The first mention of the work which we find is in a letter addressed to Yalentinian ; it is also referred to by Isidorus and Alcuin, and frequently by Chaucer. It appears to have had considerable reputation in the Middle Ages ; and at the revival of learning it was studied and highly praised by such men as Scaliger and Erasmus. There have been numerous editions, in MS. and print, of which the best is that of Arntzenius, Amsterdam, 1754. In 1483 a translation was issued from Caxton s press at Westminster.
the most popular, of Dutch poets and humourists, was born at Brouwershaven in Zeeland. Deprived of his mother at an early age, and adopted with his three brothers by an uncle, Cats was sent to school at Zierikzee. At school he was an idle boy, and learned but little ; removed, however, to the young and thriving university of Leyden, he seems to have read hard, and to have acquired a respectable knowledge of Greek and jurispru dence. After a visit to France to learn the language, and a turn in Italy with the same object, he returned to Holland, and settled at the Hague, where lie began to
practise as an advocate. His pleading in defence of a