Joseph Addison: Cato: A Tragedy, and Selected Essays. Christine Dunn Henderson and Mark E. Yellin, eds. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004.
Legend has it that General George Washington had Addison’s Cato performed for his soldiers at Valley Forge. This should be true, whether it is or not. Addison’s portrayal of Cato depicts the soul of a great Stoic with all its austere nobility but also its limitations and the errors that follow from them. Cato’s gravest error is his suicide when his cause seems hopeless. By presenting the play to his men at the nadir of America’s hopes in the War for Independence, Washington was telling them, ‘I shall not desert you.’ And, by implication, ‘Do not desert me, or your country.’ The play’s epigraph, from Seneca’s On Divine Providence, suggests as much: “A brave man, standing erect amid the ruins of the res publica.” British troops under the command George III and his generals seemed likely to ruin the American republics, to bring the rebellious ‘Whigs’ to heel. Souls steeled for Stoic self-rule informed by a sense of divine providence, which seldom announces its moves in advance, can yet emerge victorious from trials of fire.
Addison wrote the Cato in 1712, and it enjoyed immediate success on the London stage. In Britain’s North American colonies, it had been performed frequently since 1730s and it would remain popular for another generation after the Revolution. Addison was a Whig, a partisan of the Hanoverian succession seen in the person of Queen Anne and her great general, the Duke of Marlborough, whom the Whigs compared to Cato. The Tories, loyal to the Hanoverian line of English monarchs, regarded Marlborough as a usurping Julius Caesar. By asking the great Tory poet, Alexander Pope, to write the Prologue, Addison made an overture across the parties, asking both sides in Britain’s factitious politics to consider human greatness in a Christian light.
Cato is Cato the Younger, grandson of the eminent Cato the Elder—both courageous opponents of tyranny and defenders of the Roman republic. The younger Cato had allied with Pompey against Julius Caesar. The republican forces lost the Battle of Pharsalus and fled to north Africa, where Pompey was assassinated. Cato now heads the Roman forces, along with the remnant of the Senate. Now exiled in Utica, he has formed an alliance with King Juba I of Numidia. Pope, too, admires Cato, finding in him a fit hero for the tragic stage, which from the first has been intended “To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, / To raise the genius and to mend the heart, / To make mankind in conscious virtue bold, / Live oe’er each scene and be what they behold.” Not only in the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans but “through every age,” even “tyrants no more their savage nature kept, / And foes to virtue wonder’d how they wept” at such dramas. Neither weak and pitying love nor “wild ambition” finds favor in the tragedies: “Here tears shall flow from a more gen’rous cause, / Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws,” as “ancient ardor” rises in modern, British hearts. “What Plato thought” “godlike Cato was,” namely “a brave man struggling in the storms of fate, / And greatly falling with a falling state!” but finally honored more than triumphant Caesar.
Pope would never overlook the literary dimension of the struggle, concluding with an evocation not only of Cato the Younger but of his grandfather. “Britons, attend”: “With honest scorn the first fam’d Cato view’d / Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdu’ed; / Our scene precariously subsists too long / On French translation and Italian song.” Have we not defeated the French and their absolute monarch, Louis XIV? Instead, “Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage, / Be justly warm’d with your own native rage. / Such plays alone should please a British ear, / As Cato’s self had not disdain’d to hear.” Not Racine or Petrarch so much as Shakespeare and Marlowe. And surely Mr. Addison’s Roman Cato, seen through English eyes for English men.
At the Governor’s Palace at Utica, Cato’s sons, Portius and Marcus, deplore Caesar’s military triumphs. “Ye Gods, what havoc does ambition make / Among your works!” Portius exclaims (I.11-12). Yet Marcus finds him too calm, too ‘Stoic’: “Thy steady temper, Portius, / Can look on guilt, rebellion, fraud, and Caesar, / In the calm lights of mild philosophy,” but “I’m tortured” by the image of “Th’insulting tyrant prancing o’er the field” at Pharsalia, “his horse’s hoofs wet with patrician blood,” the blood of Roman senators hurled from their positions of rightful authority (I.12-19). To Marcus’ hope that Heaven will punish the insolent victor, Portius points instead to their father—a man “greatly unfortunate” but still fighting for “the cause / Of honor, virtue, liberty, and Rome” with a sword unstained with any but the blood of the guilty, of tyrannical usurpers (I.30-31). The thumotic brother relies on the gods; the philosophic brother relies on a man who embodies the best of Rome and of human nature understood as ethical and political nature.
Marcus is having none of it. “What can Cato do / Against a world, a base, degenerate world / That courts the yoke and bows the neck to Caesar?” (I.i.36-38). Trapped at Utica, guarded by Numidians, his own army feeble and the Senate ruined, he presents “a poor epitome of Roman greatness”—so much so that my soul is distracted, tempted “to renounce his precepts” (I.i.40-45). Portius adjures him to “remember what our father oft has told us,” that “the ways of heav’n are dark and intricate” and “our understanding traces ’em in vain” (I.i.46-49). Marcus admits that more than their father’s circumstance torments him. He is in love with Lucia, the daughter of one of the exiled Roman senators, but his passion is “unpity’d” by her, his love “successless” (I.i.56). He does not know that Portius shares his passion for the girl but, knowing his temper, dares not reveal himself as a rival, contenting himself with advising his brother to “call up all thy father in thy soul: / to quell the tyrant love”—the soul’s equivalent to political injustice—and “guard thy heart / On this weak side, where most our nature fails” ((I.74-77). [1] Such Stoic self-rule is not for the impassioned soul of Marcus, who determines instead to throw himself into the quest for honor in war, “to rush on certain death” (I.i.81); “Love is not to be reason’d down, or lost / In high ambition and a thirst of greatness” (I.i.84). Not thought but action can redirect his thumoerotic nature from despair.
Prince Juba appears, and Portius reflects on “how much he forms himself to glory / And breaks the fierceness of his native temper / To copy my father’s bright example” (I.i.79-82). He too is an exile, his father having been killed by Caesar at the Battle of Thepsur. The prince, in contrast to the Roman usurper, exhibits a virtue that is Roman but not merely Roman, a virtue unconfined to any particular nation, the virtue of human nature itself. And he stands as an example for brother Marcus in another way: He loves Cato’s daughter, Marcia, but, “no sport of passions,” his “sense of honor and desire for fame” bridle his love for the sake of the nobler aim of political liberty (I.i.86).
Juba too has a rival in love, the Roman senator Sempronius, a traitor in their midst. Before Portius heads for the meeting of the Senate-in-exile, he promises to “animate the soldiers’ drooping courage, / With love of freedom and contempt of life,” telling Sempronius that although we cannot “command success,” “we’ll do more, we’ll deserve it.” Sempronius fumes, “Curse on the stripling! how he apes his sire! / Ambitiously sententious!” (I.ii.40-47). Sempronius plans to betray Cato and seize his daughter after Caesar rewards him for handing Cato over.
There is a traitor among the Numidians, too: Syphax, who is preparing a revolt among his people—who, he claims, “Complain aloud of Cato’s discipline” (I.iii.4). Sempronius wishes that he could turn Juba against Cato, as well, at which urging Syphax laments that the young man is “lost,” his thoughts “full of Cato’s virtues” (I.iii.22). “Of faith, of honor, and I know not what, / That have corrupted his Numidian temper, / And struck th’ infection into all his soul” (I.iii.25-27). Nonetheless, Syphax promises to make another attempt. As for Sempronius, he heads for the Senate as well, scheming to “conceal my thoughts in passion” by “bellow[ing] out for Rome and my country” even as he schemes to ruin the men he will address.
True to his word, Syphax tries Juba again, appealing to his national pride, his Numidian patriotism, which might be turned to rebellion against Roman rule. Juba will have none of it. He esteems the “Roman soul,” which aims to civilize the world, “lay it under the restraint of laws,” and “make man mild and sociable to man” by means of “wisdom, discipline, and lib’ral arts” (I.iv.30-35). Only “virtues like these” will “make human nature shine, reform the soul, / And break our fierce barbarians into men” (I.iv.37-38). No, Juba, Syphax counters, “this Roman polish” only “render[s] man…tractable and time,” covering over natural passion, “set[ting] our looks at variance with our thoughts” and thereby “chang[ing] us into other creatures / Than the Gods design’d us” (I.iv.41-43, 46-47). Any Numidian better practices Cato’s “boasted virtues” (I.iv.62). Juba has his answer ready: the Numidian hunter’s virtues do not grow from choice, as Cato’s do, from “steadiness of mind,” not ignorance and necessity (I.iv.77). This is why Cato can endure suffering without resentment and even “thank the Gods that throw the weight upon him” (I.iv.80). The foundation of Roman civility is the rule of reason, innate to human beings as such, the right criterion for judging national customs and laws.
Syphax insists that Cato’s “rank pride” and “haughtiness of soul” mesmerized Juba’s father, leading him to an inglorious death at the hands of a slave (I.iv.81-85). You should “abandon Cato” (I.iv.89). You don’t really esteem him at all, nor do you honor your father; you merely wish to marry his daughter. You are not man of honor, only a boy in love. Yes, I do love her, the young man admits, but for honorable reasons and indeed for her honorableness: “The virtuous Marcia towers above her sex” in her “inward greatness,” her “unaffected wisdom,” and her “sanctity of manners” (I.iv.150-151). That is, he loves her for her natural virtues, as these have been cultivated by her family and her country.
We soon see Marcia and Lucia for ourselves. Of her two suitors, Lucia prefers Portius, the philosophic brother, to Marcus. As for Marcia, she of course prefers Juba to Semponius, but she remains very much Cato’s worthy daughter, telling her beloved Juba to go off to the war in support of her father and advising Lucia to wait until after the war to confer her love on Portius, lest she spread disarray in Cato’s household by openly favoring one brother over the other. “Let us not, Lucia, aggravate our sorrows, / But to the Gods permit th’ event of things,” as “the pure limpid stream, when foul with stains / Of rushing torrents and descending rains, / Works itself clear, and as it runs, refines” (I.vi.78-79, 82-84).
Act II begins with Cato before the Utican Senate, warning of Caesar’s advancing army. Sempronius makes his calculatedly fiery speech, only to have Cato reprove him. “Let not a torrent of impetuous zeal / Transport thee thus beyond the bounds of reason,” as “true fortitude is seen in great exploits, / That justice warrants, and that wisdom guides; / All else is tow’ring frenzy and distraction” (II.i.43-47). Lucius then makes a pacific speech, claiming that the gods oppose us, that Caesar is only their chosen scourge, than no more Roman blood should be shed. Cato positions himself as the virtuous mean between the extremes of Sempronius’ apparent “immodest valor” and Lucius’ “fear” (II.81-82). His moderation should not be mistaken for mediocrity, however. “A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty / Is worth a whole eternity in bondage” (II.i.100)—a judgment said to have inspired Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death.” And in answer to a peace overture from Caesar himself, Cato replies to his ambassador, “My life is grafted on the fate of Rome”; if Caesar would save Cato, “bid him spare his country” (II.ii.8-9). As for himself, I “disdain a life” that “your dictator” “has pow’r to offer” me (II.ii.8-10). Asked what terms he will accept, Cato accordingly replies, “Bid him disband his legions, / Restore the commonwealth to liberty, / submit his actions to the public censure, / And stand the judgment of a Roman senate. Bid him do this, and Cato is his friend.” (II.ii.29-33). But for now, I am no friend of Caesar but “a friend to virtue”—the truly Roman characteristic that Romans share with human nature itself, bringing their civilizing empire of liberty to those they conquer (II.ii.41). Caesar’s conquests have only “made Rome’s senate little”—the Senate, lynchpin and moderating balance wheel of the republic (II.ii.47). “By the Gods I swear, millions of worlds / Should never buy me to be like that Caesar” (II.ii.57).
To Juba, Cato confides his understanding of divine providence. The “misfortune and affliction” the gods impose “are not ills; else would they never fall / On heav’n’s first fav’rites, and the best of men” II.iv.51-53). No, “The Gods, in bounty, work up storms about us, / That give mankind occasion to exert / Their hidden strength, and throw out into practice / Virtues that shun the day, and lie conceal’d / In the smooth seasons and the calms of life” (II.iv.54-58). He disappoints his young ally by refusing his daughter’s hand in marriage; Roman, all-too-Roman, he does not think a Numidian a worthy suitor, despite Juba’s evident ‘Romanness,’ which is really humanitas. Syphax swoops in, attempting once again to turn the prince against Cato, urging him to eschew honor as a “fine imaginary notion” and to kidnap the girl, even as the early Romans seized the Sabine women (II.v. 89). But Juba calls him “a false old traitor,” intending to redeem the Carthaginians’ reputation for faithlessness and to vindicate his honor in the eyes of Cato (II.v.61). Furious at the insult, perhaps because it is true, Syphax returns to Sempronius, who assures his that factious Roman troops “will bear no more / This medley of philosophy and war,” Stoicism and Achilles, from Cato. Syphax vows to rally his Numidian troops to aid the revolt.
The third Act begins where the play began, with the sons of Cato in dialogue. Portius knows that Marcus loves his beloved, Lucia, but Marcus does not know of Portius’ love for her. He asks Portius to plead his cause to her, “With all the strength and heats of eloquence / Fraternal love and friendship can inspire” (III.i.34-35). When he leaves and Lucia arrives, he does just that (“Oh, Lucia, language is to faint to show / His rage of love; it preys upon his life; / He pines, he sickens, he despairs, he dies,” his “noble soul” ravaged (III.ii.3-5, 10). Kind Lucia, who knows of Portius’ love for her, and who requites it, worries that if Marcus knew of their love it “might perhaps destroy” him (III.29). For his part, Portius counsels her not to reject Marcus’ suit outright but “hold him up in life, and cheer his soul / With the faint glimm’ring of a doubtful hope” (III.ii.24-25). Lucia refuses. She vows to the gods to refuse them both, denying her own love to prevent “thy sister’s tears, / Thy father’s anguish, and thy brother’s death” (III.ii.28-29). She offers him the faint glimmering of a doubtful hope, saying that she will hold fast in her decision “while such a cloud of mischiefs hangs about us” (III.ii.34). Understandably “thunderstruck” at first, philosophic Portius then sees her virtue, her prudential foresight of the evils his suit would have incurred, had it succeeded (III.ii.37). That does little to console him, but Lucia holds firm in her vow. When she leaves and Marcus returns, Portius tells him that she “compassionates your pains, and pities you”—no comfort to the passionate brother, who regrets what a “fool that I was to choose so cold a friend / To urge my cause!” (III.iii.13-17).
The noise of Sempronius’ mutiny interrupt them. He has decided to carry Marcia off and join Caesar, frustrated at the continued loyalty of Juba and his Numidians—Romans in the core of their nature, after all. But Cato overawes the Roman rebels, shaming them, reminding them of his virtue, and telling to go join Caesar, if that is what they desire. [2] Ever-perfidious Sempronius recommends the death penalty for the rebels, which Cato, changing his mind, mistakenly agrees to inflict, never suspecting his colleague’s treachery. Sempronius immediately has them executed, irate at their uselessness to his scheme. He continues to desire Sempronius, and when Syphax cannot understand how he could “turn a woman’s slave” (III.vii. 11), he assures her that he only intends to kidnap and rape her (“bend her stubborn virtue to my passion”), then “cast her off” (III.vii.15-16). This reassures his henchman: “Well said! that’s spoken like thyself, Sempronius.” (III.vii.17). Syphax recommends that he dress himself as Juba to get past the Numidians who guard her. In his own way, Sempronius emulates the gods—specifically, Pluto, who seized Proserpine and carried “to hell’s tremendous gloom the affrighted maid, / There grimly smiled, pleas’d with the beauteous prize, / Nor envy’d Jove his sunshine and his skies” (III.vii.31-34).
Not suspecting this vile scheme, Marcia fears rather that her father will give her in marriage to Sempronius. She too is a Stoic, however: “While Cato lives, his daughter has no right / To love or hate, but as his choice directs” (IV.i.20-21). She refuses to trust her passions, telling Lucia, “When love once pleads admission to our hearts, / (In spite of all the virtue we can boast) / The woman who deliberates is lost” (IV.i.29-31). Her own reason will not suffice in that circumstance, so her father’s reason ought to prevail. When Sempronius arrives, deceiving the guards, and prepares to play out his sinister version of the rape of the Sabine women, a deus ex machina in the person of Juba discovers him and kills the “proud, barbarous man” (IV.ii.19), who dies in fury “by a boy’s hand,” attired in “a vile / Numidian dress, and for a worthless woman,” one he desired chiefly to spite Cato and Juba (IV.ii.21-22). He is the real barbarian, the false Roman, Juba the true one.
Marcia remains steadfast in her civic Stoicism. When she and Juba discover their love for one another, she nonetheless continues to insist that Juba “prosper in the paths of honor” (IViii.88)—go off to fight Caesar at her father’s side. But Cato himself has begun to despair, telling Lucius, “The torrent bears too hard upon me: / Justice gives way to force: the conquer’d world / Is Caesar’s: Cato has no business in it.” (IV.iv.22-24). On the contrary, his friend insists, “While pride, oppression, and injustice reign, / The world will still demand her Cato’s presence” (IV.25-26). To Cato’s objection, that he will never submit to be ruled by a tyrant, however, Lucius can only respond that Caesar will not impose “ungen’rous terms” upon the defeated rival, as “the virtues of humanity are Caesar’s” (IV.33-34). This earns him the riposte, “Such popular humanity is treason” (IV.iv.33-36). Cato’s Stoic willingness to suffer draws the line at submission to tyranny. That is, the clementia of Caesar, whether sincere or feigned, bespeaks the superiority of a man who acts like a god toward a fellow man and citizen. Cato is, finally, a citizen-Stoic, not a philosopher-Stoic. The problem will turn out to be not so much Cato’s morality but his misunderstanding of providence. He expects defeat because precisely because he does not foresee the providential plan. He does not foresee the providential plan because it is given to no one to see that.
Juba arrives, confessing his shame at being a Numidian—that is, a prince of a nation whose soldiers were ready to desert their ally. No matter, Cato assures him: “Thou hast a Roman soul” (IV.iv.43). What is more, “Falsehood and fraud shoot up in every soil, / The produce of all climes–Rome has its Caesars” (IV.iv.45-46). Juba “has stood the test of fortune” (IV.iv.49).
Learning next that his son Marcus has died in battle, though not before killing Syphax, Cato pronounces himself “satisfied,” as “my boy has done his duty” (IV.iv.70). Upon seeing the corpse, he simply remarks, “How beautiful is death, when earn’d by virtue” and “what pity is it / That we can die but once to serve our country!” (IV.iv.80-83). The first aphorism is Stoic, the second Roman. He turns to his surviving son, the philosophic one, telling him to remember that “thy life is not thy own, when Rome demands it” (IV.iv.87). It is Rome, “not a private loss,” that “requires our tears” (IV.iv.89-90). Rome had subdued the world thanks to her virtue, but with her virtue gone, having submitted tamely to its rapist, Caesar—who has reversed one of the original founding acts of Rome, the so-called rape which in fact brought wives to young Roman men—the Empire has fallen, “fall’n into Caesar’s hands” (IV.iv.105). He calmly grants Lucius the right to sue for peace from ‘humane’ Julius and advises his son to retire to “thy paternal seat, the Sabine field,” where he may live virtuously in a private life, which is “the post of honor” under a tyrannical regime (IV.iv.135, 142). If the kidnapping of the Sabine women enabled the earliest Romans to sustain themselves as a civil society, perhaps a retreat to the family, a retreat to the Sabine field, will form the foundation of a new Rome, if such can be restored after the barbarous tyrant, the criminal rapist, has had his day.
But Cato has a different plan for himself. Having satisfied himself that he foresees the intention of Providence, he reads the Phaedo, what Addison in his stage direction calls “Plato’s book on the immortality of the soul”; “Plato,” Cato says, “thou reason’st well!” (V.i.1). Plato’s Socrates had reasoned that the prospect of the soul’s immortal life on the Isles of the Blessed removes the sting of death. Given what he takes to be the equally certain prospect of Caesar’s tyranny in this world, a “world made for Caesar,” Cato pronounces himself “weary of conjecture,” weary of philosophizing, ready to the action of suicide, which will end conjecture (V.i.19-20). “Let guilt or fear / Disturb man’s rest. Cato knows neither of ’em, / Indifferent in his choice to sleep or die,” given Plato’s proof that we awaken from death as surely as we awaken from sleep (V.i.38-40). Addison’s Christian audience might well think the same thing, under similar circumstances. If God’s Providence ordains life in Paradise after death, why prolong life in this world, known to be a vail of tears? This would become Nietzsche’s charge against Christianity, that it loves an imagined life and therefore real death more than real life. By Addison’s time, Machiavelli had already anticipated that thought.
Portius joins his father, who assures him that all is well, as “I’m master of myself,” never to be mastered by Caesar (V.ii.13). Having convinced his son that he won’t commit suicide, having allowed Portius, Lucia, and Lucius that he retires to sleep—what he must regard as an instance of the noble lie—Cato prepares to execute himself, even as Lucius assures the women, “While Cato lives—his presence will protect us” (V.iv.38). His presence is needed, as Juba brings news of an impending battle with Caesar’s forces. Portius joins them with the news that Pompey’s son has unexpectedly brought reinforcements from Spain. “Call[ing] out for vengeance on his father’s death”—the very filial piety that Cato understands to be the foundation of Roman civil order—he “rouses the whole nation up to arms” (V.iv.55-57). “Were Cato at their head, once more might Rome / Assert her rights and claim her liberty” (V.iv.58-59).
There will be no human version of a deus ex machina, this time. They hear the death-cry of Cato in the next room. Mortally wounded, he blesses his friend, Lucius, his son and his son’s future wife, Marcus and Lucia, and his daughter and her future husband, Marcia and Juba. Of Juba, he says, “A senator of Rome, while Rome surviv’d, / Would not have match’d his daughter with a king,” were the king a foreigner, “but Caesar’s arms have thrown down all distinction,” all conventional distinction: “Whoe’er is brave and virtuous, is a Roman.” (V.iv.88-91). In his civic despair, he has made two philosophic discoveries, the first a distinction, the distinction between convention and nature, the second the uncovering of a just filial and political order in light of a criterion set by nature, the criterion of virtue, of human nature undisfigured by passion. “Methinks a beam of light breaks in / On my departing soul” (V.iv.94-95). Dying, what he cannot do is to act in accordance with that beam of light. His ascent from the cave of convention isn’t comic, as it is in Plato’s Republic, but tragic. “Alas, I fear / I’ve been too hasty” (V.iv.95-96), he admits, with Stoic understatement. He can only ask forgiveness. Forgiveness, above all, for his failure to do what he wanted most to do, to save Rome from a regime of tyranny. Forgiveness also, perhaps, for his failure to heed his own advice to his sons, which Portius had remarked in the play’s first scene: We do not know what heaven has traced out for us; the ways of heaven are dark and intricate.
It is left to the ranking surviving Roman in his camp, his friend Lucius, to set the new policy. With Cato, they might have won. Without him, no one believes they can.
“Let us bear this awful corpse to Caesar,
And lay it in his sight, that it may stand
A fence betwixt us and the victor’s wrath;
Cato, though dead, shall still protect his friends.” (V.iv.103-106).
And Lucius adds a properly Stoic, sententious final thought, saying that these events show the malign effects of “civil discord” not only to Romans but “to all nations,” namely, “fraud, and cruelty, and strife,” along with what is not the least evil, “rob[bing] the guilty world of Cato’s life,” the life of one of the best in the world, one of the best examples of human nature his countrymen had ever seen (V.iv.108, 111-112).
Notes
- George Washington will counsel his niece in exactly the same way. See his letter to letter to Eleanor Parke Custis, January 1, 1795.
- In facing down the rebellious officers at Newburgh, New York, Washington was enacting a similar scene in real life, supremely imitating Addison’s art in his life. See his Speech to the Officers of the Army, March 15, 1783.
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