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Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni Thomas Dunne Books, 2012
The mission statement adopted by National Review when the magazine was started in the United States in 1955 featured a statement by William F. Buckley: "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." This was a declaration, in effect, of brave futility. During the more than half-century since that mission statement was written, nothing has better described the circumstance of that ever-present but dwindling assembly of Americans who look back on the Republic (albeit somewhat mythologized) created by the eighteenth century Founding Fathers as the epitome of what America ought to be.
There is a striking similarity between this predicament and that into which Cato the Younger (95-46 BC) was born in first-century BC Rome. The great-grandson of Cato the Elder (the stern Censor known as the defender of Roman morals and opponent of the Hellenistic influences favored by Scipio), the younger Cato had the misfortune of being born into the century in which the degeneration of the Republic reached its culmination, leading to the rule of the Emperors. Just as with many Americans of recent decades, this Cato fought the irresistible tendencies of his time, sensitive to a great loss and "standing athwart history" as an embodiment of his own personal devotion to the ideal he valued so greatly.
Cato has been seen by history in varying ways over the centuries, although he is seldom thought of today. He was revered by Romans during the generations that followed him, who looked back on the mos maiorum (the Republic, or more literally "the custom of our fathers") as the best time in their history and at him as its champion. Rome's Last Citizen's authors tell us that Augustine reduced this to a merely conditional respect, seeing Cato as a secular hero whose life was centered in "the City of Man rather than the City of God." This view prevailed during the Middle Ages. By the time of the Enlightenment, however, Cato's image was not only rehabilitated, but exalted. The...