Cato, MARCUS PORCIUS, named CATO THE YOUNGER, or CATO UTICENSIS (from the place of his death), was born 95 B.C. Having lost, during childhood, both parents, he was educated in the house of his uncle, M. Livius Drusus, and, even in his boyhood, gave proofs of his decision and strength of character. In the year 72 B.C. he served with distinction in the campaign against Spartacus, but without finding satisfaction in military life, though he proved himself a good soldier. From Macedonia, where he was military tribune in 67, he went to Pergamus in search of the Stoic philosopher, Athenodorus. He brought him back to his camp, and induced him to proceed with him to Rome, where he spent the time partly in philosophical studies, and partly in forensic discussions. Desirous of honestly qualifying himself for the quaestorship, he commenced to study all the financial questions connected with it. Immediately after his election he introduced, in spite of violent opposition from those interested, a rigorous reform into the treasury offices. He quitted the quaestorship at the appointed time amid general applause. In 63 B.C. he was elected tribune, and also delivered his famous speech on the conspiracy of Catiline, in which he denounced Cæsar as an accomplice of that political desperado, and determined the sentence of the senate. Strongly dreading the influence of unbridled greatness, and not discerning that an imperial genius—like that of Cæsar—was the only thing that could remedy the evils of that overgrown monster, the Roman Republic, he commenced a career of what now appears to us blind pragmatical opposition to the three most powerful men in Rome—Crassus, Pompey, and Cæsar. Cato was a noble but strait-laced theorist, who lacked the intuition into circumstances which belongs to men like Cæsar and Cromwell. His first opposition to Pompey was successful; but his opposition to Cæsar's consulate for the year 59 not only failed, but even served to hasten the formation of the first triumvirate between Cæsar, Pompey, and Crassus. He was afterwards forced to side with Pompey, who had withdrawn from his connection with Cæsar, and become reconciled to the aristocracy. After the battle of Pharsalia (48), Cato intended to join Pompey, but hearing the news of his death, escaped into Africa, where he was elected commander by the partisans of Pompey, but resigned the post in favour of Metellus Scipio, and undertook the defence of Utica. Here, when he had tidings of Cæsar's decisive victory over Scipio at Thapsus (46), Cato, finding that his troops were wholly intimidated, advised the Roman senators and knights to escape from Utica, and make terms with the victor, but prohibited all intercessions on his own behalf. He resolved to die rather than surrender, and, after spending the night in reading Plato's Phædo, committed suicide by stabbing himself in the breast.
His example was more fruitful in results than the achievements of his life, for he became the typical example of the stoic that kindled to imitation the imaginations of the noblest Romans for two centuries under the empire.