In this episode of Epochs, I continue my narrative of Cato the Younger's political career in Rome, covering the events leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey, and the fall of the Roman Republic.
00:00:00.380Hello and welcome to this episode of Epochs where I shall be continuing my narrative of the career and achievements or failures of Cato the Younger and of course the grander story of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic.
00:00:14.020I think what I'm going to have to do is make Cato a three-parter. If Crassus got three parts, I feel like Cato really should.
00:00:21.220So what I'll do is in this episode take us through a lot of Cato's political career in Rome all the way up to the actual breakout of hostilities of the civil war between Pompey and Caesar and maybe a few details at the very beginning of that war and then leave it there this time and then in the third episode go into all sorts of detail all about Cato's involvement in the civil war.
00:00:44.660Okay so let's jump in. So a little bit of a recap if anyone's forgotten or haven't watched the first episode yet. Just to remind everyone that the headline about Cato's career is that he's extremely unbending in his principles to the point where he will damage himself or his own career, sometimes the career of his friends and family, and even damage Rome itself rather than compromise on things.
00:01:10.000And politics is the art of compromise in all sorts of ways. If you're too unyielding in politics, it will at some point damage you.
00:01:19.660One example springs to mind is the Duke of Wellington, the victor of Vermeer and Waterloo. After he'd beaten Napoleon and become world famous really, he was Prime Minister, but not for very long, about two years if I recall rightly, and in the end he was ousted from power.
00:01:35.300His own party sort of cooed him, because he wouldn't bend on certain things. There's a few certain political ideas and principles he had, and he would just refuse to countenance anything else.
00:01:47.560He just refused, point blank. And so in the end it meant the collapse of his government and the end of his political career, or not the end of his political career, but the end of his time as Prime Minister.
00:01:57.880So that's how politics often goes, even in the ancient world, and Cato suffered from that.
00:02:04.280So one example is, he's supposed to be very good friends and political allies with Cicero, but a few times he sort of wronged Cicero, or Cicero sort of wanted or expected Cato to do certain things for him, or argue a certain way for him, in favour of him, and Cato wouldn't.
00:02:21.280So Cicero, I'll talk all about Cicero in the next biography I do, I'll do Cicero, and his way, he was sort of a centrist or a moderate, he wasn't what we in modern day would call a centrist, but he was a moderate, let's say that, in Roman politics.
00:02:36.260He was neither, you know, obviously not an authoritarian and had nothing to, would have no truck with the first triumvirate, but also was prepared to blow with the winds a bit, was pragmatic, was a better politician in all sorts of ways.
00:02:50.660And every now and again he would think that Cato would do the pragmatic thing, sort of the obviously politically astute thing, and Cato wouldn't.
00:03:00.180Cato would stand on his principles, even if it meant it damaged his career, and damaged their faction, and wounded the Republic, and it exasperated Cicero in all sorts of ways.
00:03:11.560In fact, he said this in a letter to one of his best friends, Atticus.
00:03:15.760He said, quote, as for our friend Cato, I have as warm a regard for him as you.
00:03:21.380The fact remains that with all his patriotism and integrity, he is sometimes a political liability.
00:03:27.240He speaks in a senate as though he were living in Plato's Republic instead of Romulus's cesspool, end quote.
00:03:34.260Which is a nice line, Cicero calling Rome Romulus's cesspool, and if anyone would know, it would be Cicero.
00:03:40.820And so in the last few years, before the actual hot war, the hot hostilities break out between Caesar and Pompey, there's lots and lots of political machinations and back and forth.
00:03:51.220And I'm going to leave a few things out of this narrative here, because otherwise we'll be going over the same things again and again and again when I talk about Cicero and then Pompey and then Caesar.
00:04:01.400So I'm not going to talk much about Clodius and Milo's battles, although they will be mentioned.
00:04:07.280But I won't. I'll leave that detail until the Cicero one, maybe the Pompey one.
00:04:12.380But I do want to mention about parties and factions.
00:04:16.540And I've said a bit about it before, but it needs to be stressed here at the beginning of this episode.
00:04:21.580There were obviously no parties as we have them, political parties as we know them.
00:04:26.080But there were factions. However, it's really confusing because you could simultaneously be a member of more than one faction and factions that were opposed to each other.
00:04:38.680And then you switch sides briefly and then come back and then switch sides again.
00:04:43.940And so it's very, very confusing. No one can really untangle it all perfectly.
00:04:49.500There's some examples where it's cut and dry. For example, Caesar was a committed popularis and never stopped being a popularis at any point, apart from when he was dictator and he did a few things that might not have been in the people's best interests.
00:05:04.420But there you go. Whereas someone like Pompey openly switched sides many, many times.
00:05:11.800You know, Cato was neither popularis or optimate, but argued for and against both of them at different times.
00:05:19.780And so there's these factions. There's a layer of detail of this about the factions.
00:05:25.400Then there's other layers as well about family and about who or who isn't married to who or who or who isn't a nephew or a cousin or a sister-in-law of who.
00:05:37.560So it gets really confusing. And these different interest groups, let's call them interest groups, completely overlap and it's difficult to untangle.
00:05:47.920So that's something to bear in mind. And to throw extra complexity on top of that, you've got something like the first triumvirate or just backroom political deals that may fly in the face of all existing interest groups.
00:06:01.160And they're sort of secret. And so, as I say, it's difficult to untangle.
00:06:06.300So I said I'd mention Clodius. So let's do that bit then.
00:06:09.060So Clodius becomes a tribune of the people, which is really quite a powerful office, much more powerful than it used to be in antiquity.
00:06:17.320You know, after the the Gracchi, the tribune is a powerful thing.
00:06:21.960And although Sulla tried to cut the legs out from under it after Sulla, because we're now a good 15 years or more after the death of Sulla,
00:06:29.700the power of the tribune, the People's Tribune, Urban Tribune, has sort of come back into vogue and they're able to manipulate government in all sorts of ways.
00:06:39.320And this Clodius had been always a part of the Claudian family. He'd legally got himself reduced from a patrician to a plebeian, because only plebs really can be tribunes.
00:06:50.640So he had to sort of legally renounce his aristocratic credentials so he could become a tribune.
00:06:57.820But he did that and was. And then, of course, once he became tribune, he played all sorts of games, all sorts of machinations.
00:07:03.900And he's largely a creature of Pompey, Clodius, but only for a while.
00:07:11.160So to begin with, Clodius is Pompey's man, but to cut ahead a touch.
00:07:15.840After a while, he turns against Pompey completely as well, completely turns against him.
00:07:20.160But for a while, he's Pompey's man and he's attacking Cicero.
00:07:24.160And in fact, once he brings a case against Cicero, Cicero basically completely loses his nerve.
00:07:29.420And I'll talk about this in detail in the Cicero one, but completely loses his nerve and goes about literally groveling in the streets of Rome.
00:07:38.080Weirdly, to the point where no one has sympathy for him.
00:07:42.540And Clodius and his gang threaten Cicero with either, you know, a severe beating or maybe even death.
00:07:49.720And Cicero flees Rome and they burn his house down.
00:07:53.060I believe I talked about this briefly.
00:07:54.260Anyway, after a while, after the political winds change, after Clodius has turned against the hand that feeds him, Pompey, and he's sort of working on his own, it seems, people argue about that.
00:08:06.280It's not sure exactly what game Clodius was playing, the exact game he was playing.
00:08:10.980Nobody can really tell that he certainly had turned against Pompey.
00:08:14.880Pompey decides, and others, decide that he would be prudent to bring Cicero back.
00:08:21.220If nothing else, he'd be a powerful voice against these emerging gang wars.
00:08:26.800So they bring Cicero back and Cicero, although he'd been a figure of ridicule when he left, was brought back.
00:08:33.360And the people cheered him as though he was some sort of returning imperator or something.
00:08:37.560And it's around that same time, or shortly after, that Clodius tries to attack Cato in words in the forum, in the assemblies.
00:08:46.540And he tries to say that when Cato was governor of Cyprus, he'd embezzled loads of money.
00:08:53.820Because when Cato returned from Cyprus, he did bring back lots of money for Rome.
00:08:58.480He tried to claim it was more than Pompey had brought back from the East, but that sort of probably almost certainly isn't true.
00:09:04.660And nonetheless, he brought back loads of money for Rome, but none for his own pocket.
00:09:08.740None, as I mentioned in the last episode.
00:09:10.940But still, Clodius tries to besmirch him, besmirch his good name in public, in the court of public opinion, by saying he did embezzle lots of money.
00:09:20.680And Cicero stands up in the Senate and denounces Clodius, saying things like,
00:09:27.220Clodius is just a criminal, he's a thug.
00:09:30.380He shouldn't even have been a tribune in the first place.
00:09:33.200He used bribery and all sorts of nefarious mechanisms in order to be a tribune in the first place.
00:09:39.660So let's unravel all the things he's brought in, all the laws he's brought in, or he was responsible for.
00:09:46.180Let's repeal or undo all of those, because the whole thing was a hot, stinking mess.
00:09:53.180And this is really exactly what Cicero has been asked to do.