That Time a Republic Really Ended

The historical mystery that is most unresolved and likely to never be solved is: Who is the greatest agent for change in history? It is either the times and their conditions, or the human beings and ambitions. Historians tend to divide between the two—Charles Montesquieu and Alexis de Tocqueville toward the former, Edward Gibbon and Thomas Babington Macaulay toward the latter. According to common thought, the truth lies somewhere in between the two. It is less likely than I think.

Josiah Osgood (professor of classics at Georgetown University) in his latest book Uncommon Wrath. How Cato and Caesar’s Deadly Rivalry Dismantled the Roman Republic, he is on the side human ambition as the major moving force of history. He illustrates his position by comparing Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C. and Marcus Porcius Cato (95-46 B.C.). Caesar was possibly the most ambitious man ever to walk the earth, and his talents—as a soldier, a politician, a writer—were in every way commensurate with that ambition. Cato may have been ambitious for Rome, but not for him. He believed Julius Caesar to be his greatest enemy. Cato could even have been considered an enemy of ambition Per se. Caesar saw Cato as a constant roadblock in his clear path to Rome’s supremacy.

Cato and Caesar were at odds in what is now known as the Catiline Conspiracy. One Lucius Sergius Catilina was the conspirator. He was a patrician who was defeated in 63 B.C. Cicero was elected consul and defeated the following year. He then plotted a rebellion against the Senate. Both Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus, a wealthy patrician, tended to side with Catilina, with Cicero—then consul of Rome—and Cato strongly against him. With Cato’s support, Cicero arranged for execution of the conspirators with the consent and approval of the Senate. Caesar agreed to spare them. Josiah Osgood wrote that Cato had earlier suspicions about Caesar. “hardened into a deeper fear and hatred.” Caesar for his part “was appalled by Cato’s rage-filled attack, and by how Cato had carried the Senate with him. … The deadly rivalry had begun.”

Caesar was born of the family Julii, which was in its dying phase. Cato, also known as the Younger was the grandson Cato the Elder who is known for championing, Josiah Osgood said, “The Championing of the Age.” “traditional Roman values of hard work, austerity, and a willingness to make any sacrifice for the public good” And he was always ready to attack Roman senators who strayed from these values.

Julius Caesar, often in debt, was lavish in his spending, Marcus Porcius Cato parsimonious. Caesar was licentious and had many love affairs. Cato was abstemious. According to Plutarch Caesar was vain about his early balding. Cato also said that he was vain. “would often come to court without his shoes, and sit upon the bench without any undergarment, and in this attire would give judgment in capital causes, and upon persons of the highest rank.” Cato was known for being a strong individual, Caesar was careful to protect his dignity.

The two men were so different in their motives, ways, and temperaments that they could not be considered equal. Most historians favor one man over the other. For example, Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), a great German classical scholar, chose Caesar, and was dismissive of Cato, whom, he said, was “a stoic, savage, and pathetic.” “a man of the best intentions and of rare devotedness, and yet one of the most Quixotic and melancholy phenomena in this age so abounding in political caricature”—a man fit to be only “a tolerable master of finance.” Mommsen wrote the following: “The Don Quixote of the aristocrats, [Cato] proved by his character and his actions that at this time, while there was certainly an aristocracy in existence, the aristocratic policy was nothing more than a chimera.” Mommsen wrote about Caesar: “As a matter of course Caesar was a man of passion, for without passion there is no genius; but his passion was never stronger than he could control,” He also said that he was “a master of the world.”

Josiah Osgood bravely tries not to pick sides with Cato and Caesar. He instead outlines their strengths and weaknesses in measured prose. He mentions Caesar’s Alexander Complex which he doesn’t believe in, but he does compare himself to Alexander, the Great, at the same age according to Suetonius. “was heard to sigh impatiently: vexed, it seems, that at an age when Alexander had conquered the whole world, he himself had done nothing in the least epoch-making.” Osgood notes that Caesar and Cato were both effective orators. “in differing ways, each man was a master of accruing and deploying power.” He reported that “both men shared a horror for the disaster of civil war, strong even for members of their generation.” Osgood says civil war is where men are most likely to be able to use their personal strengths. “Caesar and Cato envisioned futures for Rome,” Osgood writes “that could not coexist.”

Cato imagined a future where the Senate would retain its power and the Roman Republic’s traditions. Osgood called Cato’s heightened awareness of the importance of this future. Constantism, or steadfastness, Cato had a keen opposition to injustice and corruption wherever he found it—and in the Republican Rome it was not difficult to find. Despite his Stoic philosophy being a part of his idealistic beliefs, his reality often seemed to be at odds with his ideas. Osgood quotes Cicero while writing to Atticus. “As for our friend Cato, I have as warm a regard for him as you. The fact remains that with all his patriotism and integrity he is sometimes a political liability. He speaks in the Senate as though he were living in Plato’s Republic instead of Romulus’s cesspool.”

Caesar was not slowed down by his idealism. He saw the weaknesses in the Roman system of government. His military victories in Spain, Gaul and his own fame now at its peak, he saw his own leadership as the next step to altering that system. Carl Von Clausewitz noted this famously. “diplomacy was war by other means”Caesar was skilled at using other means to make marriage politics. He would marry Julia to his rival Pompey. With him, he would create the first triumvirate at Rome with Crassus and Julia. “Marriage and politics could rarely, if ever, be separated in the lives of senatorial families,” Osgood writes. “Marriage announced an alliance of a couple and their families—and divorce a split, sometimes acrimonious.” He recounts that Pompey wanted to marry Cato’s older daughters. The younger one was for him, and that he also added that he had to do so because he couldn’t afford it. “It was Cato whom Pompey was wooing.”

Nicely balanced though Josiah Osgood’s portraits of Caesar and Cato are, setting out the virtues and flaws of both men, one nevertheless wonders if the thesis announced in his subtitle—How Cato and Caesar’s Deadly Rivalry Dismantled The Roman Republic—finally holds up. It is possible to make a stronger argument about the rivalry that Caesar and Pompey created in the destruction of the Republic. Is it possible to make the same argument about Crassus’s death at the hands the Parthians? He went off to fight in order to gain military glory. Caesar’s demise also split the triumvirate, Pompey and Caesar, leaving them to chase each other.

A convincing argument could be made for the conclusion that the Roman Republic was ended not due rivalries between prominent Romans, but because of John Buchan’s superb biography of Augustus. “Rome’s success had been her ruin?” Rome, the 753 B.C. founded village, had conquered Italy and many other countries around the Mediterranean. It had also destroyed Carthage, once powerful Carthage with its legions dominating Spain, Gaul and even Britain.

Rome was in effect an empire without an emperor at the time Caesar and Cato were born. The city’s republican administration was not flexible enough to govern and manage such extensive colonization. This government, much of it founded on its hatred of kingship—Rome’s last king was Tarquin, who ruled from 534-509 B.C.—was based on strict term limits: Consuls, for example, served only for a year and were then sent off to govern provinces for a term not to exceed two years. The Roman Senate set policy, but the various magistrates—aediles, pontifexes, quaestors, praetors, and consuls—had executive power, all subject to veto by both the Senate and the tribunes, the latter representing the populace.

Politically clever Julius Caesar saw that the Roman Republic was ending and chose to assume the leadership role. Many Romans agreed. Caesar declared himself after defeating Pompey at Pharsalus. dictator perpetuoCato was the role that he would have played for decades, had he not been able to go out to the Theatre of Pompey in March 15th. Cato, 48 years old, had taken the side against Caesar and took his own life. Josiah Osgood says it was death. “necessarily preferable to defeat.”

Caesar killed by assassins, Cato by his own hand—a strange way for a strong rivalry to end, but then history often specializes in unexpected endings.

Uncommon Wrath. How Cato and Caesar’s Deadly Rivalry Dismantled the Roman Republic
Josiah Osgood
Basic Books, 352 pages, $32

Joseph Epstein is most recently the author of Gallimaufry: An assortment of essays, reviews and bits.