different degrees, in private as well as in public life, and for this
reason they belong to the domain of comedy as well as to that of
history. If I were not afraid of failing in respect towards the gravity
of the personage I am studying, I should say that this haughty response
that I have just quoted, makes me think involuntarily of one of the
finest creations of our theatre. It is a Cato that Molière wished to
paint in the _Misanthrope_. We are here only concerned with the fortune
of a private individual, and not with the government of the world, we
have only to do with a lawsuit; but in his position, the Cato of the
Comedy speaks just like the other. He will not submit to customs that he
does not approve of. Even at the risk of losing his case he will not
visit the judges, and when people say to him: “And who do you then
intend to solicit for you?” he answers as haughtily as Cato: “Who do I
intend? Reason, my just cause, and equity.” Whatever we may feel, these
personages always inspire a great respect. We have not the heart to
blame them, but, nevertheless, we must have the courage to do so.
Honesty, honour, liberty, all noble causes in fine, cannot well be
defended with this exaggerated and strait-laced rigour. They have
disadvantages enough by themselves in their struggle with corruption and
licence, without making them more unpleasing still by a useless
stiffness and severity. To multiply scruples is to disarm virtue. It is
quite enough that she is forced to be grave; why wish to make her
repulsive? Without sacrificing anything of principle, there are points
on which she ought to give way to men in order to rule them. What proves
that those men, who boast of never giving way, are wrong is that they
are not as inflexible as they suppose, and that, in spite of their
resistance, they always end by making some concessions. That austere,
that stern Alceste, is a member of society after all, and of the best.
He lives at court, and we can see very well what he is. I do not say
only by his manners and appearance, although I imagine _the man with the
green ribbons_ dressed with taste and elegance, but by those turns of
phrase he employs, by those polite evasions which are also lies, and
which he will not endure in Philinte. Before breaking out against the
nobleman of the sonnet he uses adroit formulas where we only catch a
glimpse of the truth:
“Do you find anything amiss in my sonnet?”
“I do not say that.”
What is this “_I do not say that_,” which he repeats so often, but a
blameworthy compliance and weakness, if we judge it with the rigour of
the misanthrope? Rousseau severely reproaches Alceste for it, and I do
not think that Alceste, if he remains faithful to his principles, can
find any reply to Rousseau; it would not be difficult either to point
out contradictions of the same kind in Cato. This stern enemy of
intrigue, who at first will do nothing for the success of his
candidature, ends by canvassing: he went to the Campus Martius like
everybody else, to shake hands with the citizens and ask for their
votes. “What!” says Cicero to him ironically, whom these inconsistencies
put into good humour, “is it your business to come and ask for my vote?
Is it not rather I who ought to thank a man of your merit who wishes to
brave fatigue and dangers for me?”[299] This stern enemy of lying did
more: he had one of those slaves called _nomenclatores_ who knew the
name and profession of every citizen of Rome, and he used him like the
rest, to make the poor electors believe that he knew them. “Is not this
cheating and deceiving the public?” said Cicero, and he was not wrong.
The saddest thing is that these concessions, that compromise the dignity
and unity of a character, are of no use: they are generally made with a
bad grace, and too late; they do not efface the remembrance of past
rudeness, and gain nobody. Notwithstanding his tardy solicitations and
the aid of his _nomenclator_, Cato did not attain the consulship, and
Cicero severely blames the awkwardness that made him fail. No doubt he
could do without being consul; but the republic had need that he should
be consul, and in the eyes of many good citizens, to favour by
refinements of scrupulosity and exaggerations of honour the triumph of
the worst men was almost to abandon and betray it.
It is easy to understand these excesses and exaggerations in a man who
intends _to fly the approach of humankind_, like Alceste; but they are
unpardonable in one who wishes to live with men, and still more so in
one who aspires to govern them. The government of men is a nice and
difficult matter which requires a man not to begin by repelling those
whom he is desirous of leading. Certainly he ought to intend to make
them better, but it is necessary to begin by taking them as they are.
The first law of politics is to aim only at the possible. Cato often
overlooked this law. He could not condescend to those attentions without
which one cannot govern the people; he had not sufficient flexibility of
character nor that turn for honourable intrigue which make a man succeed
in the things he undertakes; he wanted some of that pliancy that brings
opposing pretensions together, calms jealous rivalries, and groups
people divided by humours, opinions and interests around one man. He
could only be a striking protest against the manners of his time; he was
not the head of a party. Let us venture to say, notwithstanding the
respect we feel for him, that his spirit was obstinate because his mind
was narrow. He did not at first distinguish the points on which a man
should give way and those that ought to be defended to the last. A
disciple of the Stoics, who said that all faults are equal, that is,
according to Cicero’s joke, that it is as wrong to kill a fowl
needlessly as to strangle one’s father, he had applied this hard and
strange theory to politics. His mind being restricted to the merest
legality, he defended the smallest things with tiresome obstinacy. His
admiration of the past knew no discrimination. He imitated the ancient
costumes as he followed the old maxims, and he affected not to wear a
tunic under his toga because Camillus did not wear one. His want of
breadth of mind, his narrow and obstinate zeal were more than once
hurtful to the republic. Plutarch reproaches him with having thrown
Pompey into Caesar’s arms by refusing some unimportant gratifications of
his vanity. Cicero blames him for having dissatisfied the knights whom
he had had so much trouble to conciliate with the senate. No doubt the
knights made unreasonable demands, but he should have conceded
everything rather than let them give Caesar the support of their immense
wealth. It was on this occasion that Cicero said of him: “He thinks he
is in the republic of Plato and not in the mud of Romulus,”[300] and
this saying is still that which best characterizes that clumsy policy
that, by asking too much of men, ends by getting nothing.
Cato’s natural character was that of opposition. He did not understand
how to discipline and lead a party, but he was admirable when it was a
question of making head against an adversary. To conquer him, he
employed a tactic in which he often succeeded: when he saw that a
decision that seemed to him fatal, was about to be taken, and that it
was necessary at any price to prevent the people voting, he began to
speak and did not leave off. Plutarch says that he could speak for a
whole day without fatigue. Nothing deterred him, neither murmurs, cries,
nor threats. Sometimes a lictor would pull him down from the rostrum,
but as soon as he was free he went up again. One day the tribune
Trebonius got so much out of patience with this resistance that he had
him led off to prison: Cato, without being disconcerted, continued his
speech while going along, and the crowd followed him to listen. It is to
be remarked that he was never really unpopular: the common people, who
love courage, were at last mastered by this steady coolness and this
unconquerable energy. It sometimes happened that they declared
themselves in his favour, contrary to their interests and preferences,
and Caesar, all-powerful with the populace, dreaded nevertheless the
freaks of Cato.
It is none the less true, as I have already said, that Cato could not be
the head of a party, and what is more deplorable is, that the party for
which he fought had no head. It was an assemblage of men of capacity and
of dignified personages, none of whom had the necessary qualities to
take the lead of the rest. Not to mention Pompey, who was only a
doubtful and distrusted ally, among the others, Scipio repelled every
one by his haughtiness and cruelty; Appius Claudius was only a credulous
augur who believed in the sacred chickens; Marcellus was wanting in
pliability and urbanity, and was himself aware that scarcely anybody
liked him; Servius Sulpicius had all the weaknesses of a punctilious
lawyer; and lastly, Cicero and Cato erred in opposite directions, and it
would have been necessary to unite them both, or modify them one by the
other in order to have a complete politician. There were, therefore,
only brilliant personalities and no head in the republican party before
Pharsalia, and we may even say that, as this jealous selfishness and
these rival vanities were ill blended, there was scarcely a party.
The civil war, which was a stumbling-block for so many others, which
laid bare so many littlenesses and so much cowardice, revealed, on the
other hand, all the goodness and all the greatness of Cato. A sort of
crisis then took place in his character. As in certain maladies the
approach of the last moments gives more elevation and lucidity to the
mind, so, it seems, that at the threat of that great catastrophe which
was about to engulf the free institutions of Rome, Cato’s honest soul
was yet further purified, and that his intelligence took a juster view
of the situation from the feeling of the public dangers. While fear
makes others go to extremes, he restrains the usual violence of his
conduct, and, while thinking of the dangers the republic is running, he
becomes all at once discreet and moderate. He who was always ready to
attempt useless resistance, advises giving way to Caesar; he wishes them
to grant all his demands; he resigns himself to all concessions in order
to avoid civil war. When it breaks out he submits to it with sorrow, and
tries by all means to diminish its horrors. Every time he is consulted
he is on the side of moderation and mildness. In the midst of those
young men, the heroes of the polished society of Rome, among those
lettered and elegant wits, it is the rugged Cato who defends the cause
of humanity. He compelled the decision, in spite of the outbursts of the
fiery Pompeians, that no town shall be sacked, no citizen be killed off
the field of battle. It seems that the approach of the calamities he
foresaw, softened that energetic heart. On the evening of the battle of
Dyrrhachium, while every one was rejoicing in Pompey’s camp, Cato alone,
seeing the corpses of so many Romans lying on the ground, wept: noble
tears, worthy of being compared with those that Scipio shed over the
ruins of Carthage, the memory of which antiquity so often recalled! In
the camp at Pharsalia, he severely blamed those who spoke only of
massacre and proscription and divided among themselves in advance the
houses and lands of the conquered. It is true that after the defeat,
when the greater number of those wild schemers were at Caesar’s knees,
Cato went everywhere to stir him up enemies and to revive the civil wars
in all the ends of the earth. Just as he had wished them to yield before
the battle, so was he determined not to submit when there was no more
hope of freedom. We know his heroic resistance in Africa, not only
against Caesar, but against the furious men of the republican party, who
were always ready to commit some excess. We know how he would not accept
the pardon of the victor after Thapsus, when he saw that all was lost,
and killed himself at Utica.
His death made an immense impression in all the Roman world. It put to
the blush those who were beginning to accustom themselves to slavery; it
gave a sort of new impulse to the discouraged republicans, and revived
opposition. During his life-time, Cato had not always rendered good
service to his party; he was very useful to it after his death. The
proscribed cause had henceforth its ideal and its martyr. Its remaining
partisans united and sheltered themselves under that great name. At Rome
especially, in that great, unquiet, restless city, where so many men
bowed the head without submitting, his glorification became the ordinary
theme of the discontented. “The battle raged round the body of Cato,”
says M. Mommsen, “as at Troy it had raged around that of Patroclus.”
Fabius Gallus, Brutus, Cicero, and many others no doubt whom we do not
know, wrote his eulogy. Cicero began his at the request of Brutus. At
first he was repelled by the difficulty of the subject: “This is a work
for Archimedes,” said he;[301] but as he advanced, he took a liking to
his work and finished it with a sort of enthusiasm. This book has not
come down to us: we only know that Cicero made a complete and unreserved
apology for Cato. “he raises him to the skies,”[302] says Tacitus. They
had, however, disagreed more than once, and he speaks of him without
much consideration in many passages of his correspondence; but, as often
happens, death reconciled everything. Besides, Cicero, who reproached
himself with not having done enough for his party, was happy to find an
opportunity of paying his debt. His book, that the name of the author
and that of the hero recommended at once, had so great a success that
Caesar was uneasy and discontented about it. He took care, however, not
to show his ill-humour; on the contrary, he hastened to write a
flattering letter to Cicero to congratulate him on the talent he had
displayed in his work. “In reading it,” he told him, “I feel that I
become more eloquent.”[303] Instead of employing any rigorous measure,
as was to be feared, he thought that the pen alone, according to the
expression of Tacitus, ought to avenge the attacks that the pen had
made. By his order, his lieutenant and friend Hirtius addressed a long
letter to Cicero, which was published, and in which he controverted his
book. Later, as this answer was not thought sufficient, Caesar himself
entered the lists, and, in the midst of the anxieties of the war in
Spain, he composed the _Anti-Cato_.
This moderation of Caesar has been justly praised: it is not common with
men who possess unlimited authority, and the Romans justly said, that it
is seldom a man is contented to write when he can proscribe. The fact
that he detested Cato adds to the merit of his generous conduct. He
always speaks of him with bitterness in his _Commentaries_, and although
he was accustomed to do justice to his enemies, he never misses an
opportunity of decrying him. Has he not dared to assert that in taking
up arms against him, Cato gave way to personal rancour and to the desire
of revenging his electoral defeats,[304] when he well knew that no one
had more generously forgotten himself in order to think only of his
country! This was because there was more than political disagreement
between them, there was antipathy of character. The defects of Cato must
have been particularly disagreeable to Caesar, and his virtues were
those that Caesar not only did not seek to acquire, but which he could
not even understand. How could he have any feeling for his strict
respect for law, for his almost servile attachment to old customs? he
who found a lively pleasure in laughing at ancient usages. How could a
prodigal, who had formed the habit of squandering the money of the state
and his own without reckoning, how could he do justice to those rigorous
scruples that Cato had in the handling of the public funds, to the
attention he gave to his private affairs, and to that ambition, so
strange for that time, of not having more debts than assets? These were,
I repeat, qualities that Caesar could not comprehend. He was, then,
sincere and convinced when he attacked them. A man of wit and pleasure,
indifferent to principles, sceptical in opinion, accustomed to live in a
frivolous and polished society, Cato could scarcely appear to him
anything else than fanatical and brutal. As there was nothing that he
put above refinement and politeness of manners, an elegant vice suited
him better than a savage virtue. Cato, on the contrary, although he was
not a stranger to literary culture and the spirit of society, had none
the less remained at bottom an old-fashioned Roman. Notwithstanding
their power, society and letters could not entirely overcome that
bluntness, or if you will, that brutality of manner that he owed to his
constitution and his race, and of which we find something even in his
finest actions. To cite only one example; Plutarch, in the admirable
narrative that he has given of his last moments, relates that, when a
slave refused, through affection for Cato, to give him his sword, he
knocked him down with a furious blow by which his hand was covered with
blood. To the eyes of a fastidious man like Caesar, this blow revealed a
vulgar nature, and I am afraid prevented him understanding the grandeur
of this death. The same contrast, or rather the same antipathy, is found
in all their private conduct. While Caesar’s maxim was to pardon
everything in his friends, and he therefore pushed complacency so far as
to shut his eyes to their treasons, Cato was too exacting and particular
with regard to his. At Cyprus he did not hesitate to fall out with
Munatius, his life-long companion, by showing an offensive distrust of
him. He was, no doubt, in his household, a model of honour and fidelity;
yet he did not always maintain that respect and regard for his wife that
she deserved. We know how he gave her up without ceremony to Hortensius,
who had asked him for her, to take her again without scruple after
Hortensius’ death. How different was Caesar’s conduct with regard to
his, although he had reason to complain of her! A man had been surprised
at night in his house, the affair came before the courts, he might have
avenged the outrage, but he preferred rather to forget it. Called as a
witness before the judges, he declared he knew nothing about it, thus
saving his rival in order to preserve his wife’s reputation. He only
divorced her later, when the report of the intrigue had blown over. This
was acting like a well-bred man of the world. Here again, between Cato
and him, it is the least scrupulous and in the main the least honourable
of the two, the fickle and libertine husband, who, by reason of a
certain natural delicacy, appears in a more advantageous light.
This contrast in conduct, this opposition of character, seem to me to
explain the way in which Caesar writes of Cato in his book, even better
than all their political disagreements. The fragments of it that survive
and the testimony of Plutarch, show that he attacked him with extreme
violence, and that he tried to make him at once ridiculous and odious.
But it was useless, it was lost labour. People continued,
notwithstanding his efforts, to read and admire Cicero’s book. Not only
did Cato’s reputation survive Caesar’s insults, it increased still more
under the empire. In Nero’s time, when despotism was heaviest, Thrasea
wrote his history again, Seneca quotes him on every page of his books,
and to the end he was the pride and model of honest men who preserved
some feeling of honour and dignity in the general abasement of
character. They studied his death even more than his life, for they
needed then, above all, to learn how to die, and when this sad necessity
presented itself, it was his example they set before their eyes, and his
name that was in their mouths. To have sustained and consoled so many
noble hearts in these cruel trials is assuredly a great glory, and I
think that Cato would not have desired any other.
III.
The conclusion to be drawn from Caesar’s conduct after Pharsalia, and
from his relations with Cicero, is, that he wished at that time to draw
nearer to the republican party. It was difficult for him to act
otherwise. As long as it was a question of overturning the republic, he
had accepted the support of everybody, and the worst men had come to him
by preference. “When a man was eaten up with debts and in want of
everything,” said Cicero, “and if, besides, he was shown to be a
scoundrel capable of daring anything, Caesar made him his friend;”[305]
but all these unprincipled and unscrupulous men, excellent for upsetting
an established power, were worth nothing in setting up a new one. It was
impossible that Caesar’s government should inspire any confidence as
long as some honourable persons, whom men were accustomed to respect,
were not seen with the master and alongside these adventurers, whom they
had learnt to fear. Now, honourable men were chiefly found among the
vanquished. We must add that it was not Caesar’s idea that one party
alone should profit by his victory. He had no ambition to work, like
Marius or Sulla, for the triumph of a faction: he wished to found a new
government, and he invited men of different opinions to aid him in the
enterprise. It has been asserted that he sought to reconcile parties,
and great compliments have been paid him for it. The praise is not
altogether just: he did not reconcile them, he annihilated them. In the
monarchical system, that he wished to establish,[306] the old parties of
the republic had no place. He had cleverly used the dissensions of the
people and the senate to dominate both; the first result of his victory
was to put them both aside, and we may say that after Pharsalia, there
was only Caesar on one side, and the vanquished on the other. This
explains how it was that, once victorious, he made use indifferently of
the partisans of the senate and those of the democrats. This equality
which he established between them was natural, since they had all
become, equally and without distinction, his subjects. Only he well knew
that in accepting the services of the old republicans he should not have
instruments always tractable, and that he would be obliged to allow them
a certain independence of action and speech, to preserve, at least
outwardly, some appearance of a republic; but that in itself did not
give him much uneasiness. He had not that invincible repugnance for
liberty that princes have who are born to an absolute throne, and who
only know its name to dread and detest it. He had lived with it for
twenty-three years, he had become accustomed to it, he knew its
importance. Therefore he did not seek to destroy it entirely. He did not
silence, as he might have done, the eloquent voices that regretted the
past; he did not even impose silence on that harassing opposition that
tried to respond to his victories by jeers. He allowed some acts of his
administration to be criticized, and permitted men to give him advice.
This great mind well knew that a country becomes enervated when the
citizens are rendered indifferent to public affairs, and lose the taste
for attending to them. He did not think that anything solid could be
established on passive and silent obedience, and in the government that
he founded he wished to preserve something of public life. Cicero tells
us this in a curious passage of his correspondence: “We enjoy here a
profound calm,” he writes to one of his friends; “I should rather
prefer, however, a little honest and salutary agitation;” and he adds:
“I see that Caesar is of my opinion.”[307]
All these reasons decided him to take one step further on that path of
generosity and clemency on which he had entered after Pharsalia. He had
pardoned the greater number of those who had borne arms against him; he
invited some of them to share his power. At the very time that he was
recalling the greater part of the exiles, he appointed Cassius his
lieutenant; he gave Brutus the government of Cisalpine Gaul, and
Sulpicius that of Greece. We shall speak further on of the first two; it
is important, the better to appreciate Caesar’s policy, to rapidly make
known the third, and to inquire how he had become worthy of the favours
of the conqueror, and in what manner he profited by them.