Marcus Cato
historical figure · 8 works · 11 mentions · 20 anchored passages
Cato
in the texts
Letters to Lucilius
Roman statesman cited for a remark about people in the city who never see the sun rise or set.
There are certain antipodes in the very same city, who, as Marcus Cato says, have never seen either the rising or the setting sun.
"Does Marcus Cato seem to you to philosophize modestly, who checks a civil war by his vote?
what else did Cato do but cry out and send forth unavailing words, when at one moment, lifted by the hands of the people and covered with their spittle, he was carried off from the forum, and at another, led away from the Senate into prison?
On the Commonwealth
A 'new man' (unknown by birth) who rose through public service, held up as a model of virtue chosen over leisure.
As for Marcus Cato, a man unknown and new—the very pattern by which all of us who pursue these same ends are drawn toward industry and virtue—he assuredly might have enjoyed his leisure at Tusculum, a healthful spot and near at hand.
who, in short—as Cato writes that my grandfather Africanus was wont to say—can declare the same of himself:
but that Pericles, when now with the highest authority he had for very many years presided over his state in peace and in war, should be assailed in verses, and that these should be acted on the stage, was no more becoming than if our own Plautus or Naevius had wished to revile Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius to revile Marcus Cato .
On the Nature of the Gods
Prominent Roman statesman referenced as the more plausible recipient of the Dioscuri's news, by contrast with Vatinius
Those, then, whom you called the sons of Tyndareus, that is, men born of man, and whom Homer, who lived not long after their age, says were buried at Lacedaemon — those you suppose to have come to meet Vatinius with white nags and no grooms, and to have announced the victory of the Roman people to Vatinius, a rustic, rather than to Marcus Cato, who was then the chief man?
Consolation to Helvia
Marcus Porcius Cato (the Younger), cited as an example of a man whose electoral rejections were no disgrace to him but to the offices that rejected him.
Who is so far blinded to the beholding of truth as to think it a disgrace to Marcus Cato that he was twice rejected in his candidacy for the praetorship and the consulship?
How great a man, who drew into admiration of himself one to be admired even by his own Cato!
Consolation to Marcia
Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger), Roman statesman famed for his integrity and his suicide rather than submit to Caesar, cited as an example of timely versus untimely death.
Marcus Cato, if the sea had swallowed him as he returned from Cyprus and the administration of the royal inheritance, or that very money which he was bringing as a war-fund for the civil war—would it not have gone well with him?
after these, exile (your son was no more innocent than Rutilius), prison (he was no wiser than Socrates), a breast pierced by a self-inflicted wound (he was no more blameless than Cato).
On Anger
Roman statesman presented as a model of dignified indifference to personal insult.
Someone, not knowing him, struck Marcus Cato unawares in the bath;
he began to know Cato.
On Benefits
Roman statesman cited for a saying about self-reliance used in the debate over self-directed benefits.
Marcus Cato says:
On the Steadfastness of the Wise Man
Roman statesman (Cato the Younger), held up as the surest real-world model of the Stoic wise man, mistreated by political enemies yet unconquered in spirit.
But this very Marcus Cato, from the mention of whom this discussion arose, I fear may be even above our model.
Recently, when mention happened to be made of Marcus Cato, you grew indignant, as you cannot endure injustice, that Cato's own age had understood him too little, that it had ranked a man who rose above the likes of Pompey and Caesar below the likes of Vatinius;
for no wise man can suffer either injury or insult, and the immortal gods have given us in Cato a surer model of the wise man than they gave in Ulysses and Hercules to earlier ages.