Cicero - Anthony Everitt [64]
One way or another, Caesar’s speech was a courageous and clever act. It had a decisive impact, and opinion turned against execution. Silanus recanted, saying he had meant not death but imprisonment. Only one ex-Consul, Catulus, spoke against Caesar’s proposal.
Then Marcus Porcius Cato, an influential figure still only in his early thirties, took the floor. Cato was one of the most remarkable and idiosyncratic personalities of the age. An uncompromising Republican, he was a ferocious opponent of the populares and of anyone who breached the constitution. From his childhood on he had had an obstinate nature and his name became a byword for virtue and truthfulness. “That’s incredible, even if Cato says so,” was a common expression.
AS a boy he had been “sluggish of comprehension and slow, but what he comprehended he held fast in his memory.” He had loved a half-brother, who died young, with the same almost monomaniac excess with which he adhered to his opinions. Cato had rigid views of right and wrong, and he had no sense of humor. He was impervious to physical discomfort. Apart from the fact that he was a heavy drinker, he lived austerely, sometimes not troubling to wear shoes. Although not averse to making money, he was ferociously opposed to bribery and corruption in public life. AS Quaestor in 65, he was responsible for the management of the Treasury: he reformed the lax financial procedures he found there, upsetting the civil servants and his Senatorial friends. Cicero admired him, but found him difficult to handle, mainly because he had no aptitude whatever for compromise.
Cato was a good public speaker with a loud, penetrating voice, although, unusually for the age, he did not practice rhetorical exercises or rehearse his speeches in public. Once he was on his feet he could speak for hours and was an indomitable filibusterer. On this occasion he was blunt. He attacked Silanus for changing his mind but reserved most of his scorn for Caesar. Under a popular pretext and with humane words, he said, Caesar was trying to subvert the state. He wanted to frighten the Senate about a situation from which he had a good deal to fear himself. Why was the Senate hesitating? The conspirators had confessed to planning massacres and arson. “If we could afford to risk the consequences of making a mistake,” Cato said (according to Sallust), “I would be quite willing to let experience convince you of your folly, since you scorn advice. But we are completely encircled. Catilina and his army are ready to grip us by the throat, and there are other foes within the walls, in the very heart of our city.” He concluded by putting a motion to the house: “Having admitted their criminal intention, they should be put to death as if they had been caught in the actual commission of capital offenses, in accordance with ancient custom.”
An incident occurred while Cato was speaking which caused much amusement at his expense. A letter was brought in for Caesar, and Cato immediately accused him of being in touch with the conspirators. He challenged him to read the note out loud. Caesar simply passed it across: it was a love letter from Servilia, Caesar’s mistress at the time and Cato’s half-sister. Cato threw it back angrily with the words: “Take it, you drunken idiot.”
According to Plutarch, the speech was the only one of Cato’s ever to be published and is a good example of his ability, when he fixed his mind on something, to see it with exceptional clarity. He was one of the first to recognize the seriousness of the threat Caesar posed to conservative interests. The Senate was impressed and shifted its ground again, endorsing Cato’s motion for the death penalty. Picking up a suggestion of Caesar’s, they also ordered the confiscation