ABSTRACT
The emblematic figure of Cato Uticensis has been variously represented in history, philosophy, political thought, and drama. This chapter deals with how Cato’s death has been perceived, in the eighteenth century, by such different scholars as Adam Smith and Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau was notoriously favourable to “egalite”, which was a feature of the state of nature, lost with the beginning of society. Echoing Seneca, Smith concludes that Cato appeared “a spectacle which even the gods themselves might behold with pleasure and admiration”. Both Smith and Rousseau recognize in Cato a problematic figure; Smith clearly suggests that all eulogies somehow conceal the real man; Rousseau thinks that Cato is an ill-adjusted man, who would have been suited to earlier times. Smith’s position was more “realistic”: he saw the man with all his qualities and failings, and judged him simply as belonging to the opposing side of the party which was fated to win, namely an autocratic power.
