Amid all this corruption and laxity one man stood out as an exemplar and professor of the ancient ways. Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger had violated a precept of his great-great-grandfather by studying Greek; from it he derived that Stoic philosophy which shared with his republican convictions the inflexible devotion of his life. He inherited 120 talents ($432,000), but lived in sedulous simplicity. He lent money, but took no interest. He lacked his ancestor’s rough humor, and frightened people by what seemed to them his obstinate incorruptibility and his untimely addiction to principles. His life was an unforgivable indictment of theirs; they wished he would sin a little, if only out of a decent respect for the habits of mankind. They must have rejoiced when, with an almost Cynical conception of woman as a biological instrument, he “lent” his wife Marcia to his friend Hortensius—i.e., divorced her and assisted at her marriage to the orator—and later, when Hortensius died, took her again to wife.28 He could not be popular, for he was the relentless enemy of all dishonesty, the stern defender of the patria potestas, a more merciless censor moralium than Cato Censor himself. He seldom laughed or smiled, made no effort to be affable, and sharply reprimanded any who dared to flatter him. He was defeated for the consulship, said Cicero, because he acted like a citizen in Plato’s republic instead of a Roman living among “the dregs of Romulus’ posterity.”29
As quaestor Cato made himself a terror to all incompetence and malfeasance, and guarded the Treasury ferociously from all political raids; nor did his watchfulness abate when his term expired. His indictments fell upon all parties and left him with a thousand admirers but hardly a friend. As praetor he persuaded the Senate to issue an order that all candidates, soon after election, must come into court and give under oath a detailed account of their expenses and proceedings in the campaign. The measure disturbed so many politicians, most of whom depended upon bribery, that they and their clients, when Cato next appeared in the Forum, reviled and stoned him; whereupon he climbed to the rostrum, faced the crowd resolutely, and talked them into submission. As tribune he led a legion into Macedonia; his attendants rode on horseback, he went on foot. He scorned the business classes and defended aristocracy, or rule by birth, as the only alternative to plutocracy, or rule by wealth. He warred without truce upon the men who were corrupting Roman politics with money, and Roman character with luxury; and he stood out to the last against every move, by either Pompey or Caesar, toward dictatorship. When Caesar had overthrown the Republic Cato died by his own hand, with a volume of philosophy by his side.