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Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I came to this page seeking information about what the Anticato was actually about, i.e something substantial in the text which inspired admirers of the work (according to Plutarch). Who knows what it was actually about? Doktor Waterhouse (talk) 15:54, 29 June 2008 (UTC)Reply
This article has nothing to do with the content of Anticato. It gives a few amusing anecdotes about Cicero and Cato. The article states that some fragments of Anticato survived. Perhaps it would be nice to describe their content and not gossip about how Caesar seduced Cato's half sister. Meishern (talk) 12:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)Reply
This is not about anecdotes, but about the personal, political, and military rivalry between Caesar and Cato. Caesar was a member of the Populares faction for his entire political career, while Cato was a prominent member of the rival Optimates faction. They had much different ideologies and even moral stances, rivaled each other for decades in the Senate, and eventually fought against each other in Caesar's Civil War. Cato chose to commit suicide rather than surrender to his victorious enemy.
Following Cato's death, Cicero (a fellow member of the Optimates) wrote a panegyric in praise of Cato and his supposed virtues. Caesar wrote his polemic to depict Cato in a more negative light. Cato's memory was also defended in another panegyric by Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, who was probably more than a little biased in Cato's favor. Cato was Brutus' maternal uncle, and eventually Brutus' father-in-law. Brutus married his first cousin Porcia Catonis, Cato's daughter.
For some reason, a rather idealized vision of Cato as a true champion of Republican ideals and an incorruptible man was propagated for centuries in Roman sources. In the Renaissance and the Enlightenment era, Cato was again put forward as a great example of a virtuous hero. Given that Cato's political career involved placing the interests of aristocrats over the rest of the citizens, and one of his most famous victories in the Senate was convincing the Senators to order mass executions of conspirators, without trials or solid evidence of guilt, Caesar probably had plenty of material to cover about Cato's actual character. Dimadick (talk) 23:10, 3 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
