This is the Biography of Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, the Mortal Enemy of Caesar.

Cato was born in 95 BC and he died in 46 BC when he was 49 years old. Cato died in Utica in North Africa. He was born in Roma, Italy.

Cato was born into a Politicians family. His father and Grandfather had both been politicians themselves.

Even when Cato was a child he was very obedient, questioning and hard to be persuaded by things. There are a few stories of Cato’s childhood, but i will only tell one. When Cato was young a friend of his father arrived at his house and asked the kids to support him in a controversial business. Everyone except Cato said yes and then when his father’s friend started hanging Cato out of a window Cato still, didn’t agree. 

During his teens and early adulthood Cato studied stoic philosophy and politics and became very good at both of these things.

In his early career Cato volunteered to join the army to defeat spartacus. He defeated Spartacus in 71 BC. Cato then takes command of his dead half brothers army, Caepio. Cato couldn’t marry his first wife, because she was stolen by somebody else and Cato has to mary Atilia instead. After this Pompey allowed to command an army to stop Mithridates. When he returned he wanted to pass a land reform, but Cato didn’t like this, because it was part of what his stoic philosophy and politics told him. The land reform and what he had learned caused Cato to dislike Pompey and other warmongers hungry for power.

In his middle career Cato fight against Catiline and he starts changing senate rules and laws in 63 BC. Catiline is successfully defeated. Cato blocks laws from Pompey and Caesar he thinks are bad. Pompey, Crassus and Caesar join, because of Caesars smart planning and Cato starts to lose power to Caesar and Pompey in 56 BC. Cato gets exiled to Cuprys to annex Cyprus in 58 BC. During his middle career Cato was at his strongest but after that he started to lose power.

In his later career he saw Caesar’s power grow stronger and trying to get Pompey and Caesar to split up and disband the Triumvirate. He was unsuccessful. He tried to run for consul to see if he could do it that way, but this didn’t work either. Only when it was too late did he get Pompey on his side. The civil war started and Pompey was killed in Egypt after being backstabbed by his own friends. Cato hid in Utica, but he couldn’t hold Ceaser away and he did killed himself in 47 BC. Even during his later career until the very end Cato was trying to stop Caeser, but his power wasn’t strong enough.

Cato is remembered as man with great will power. He is remembered as a great Stoic and believing in the power of Liberty. (If you don’t understand what Liberty means check one of my other blog posts about it.)Although in the last 100 years not many people are taught about Cato.

If Cato wouldn’t have existed then Caeser would have had less opposition and the Roman empire would have existed earlier.

 

My Thoughts on the Book

 

I learnt quite a few things that happened during Cato’s lifetime. For example: I learnt that Caesar isn’t really a good guy he’s more of a bad guy.(based on my Libertarian perspective.) That there also was chaos when the republic turned into a empire. Not only when the empire collapsed. This is one of the reasons why this book isn’t one of my favorite books. I like books that take place around my time because the subjects they have are mostly more interesting than earlier ones.

This book is not very similar to any previous books i’ve read, because I haven’t read any biographies yet. This is my first biography. There are also some other reasons that it isn’t my favorite book. Because it’s educational. It was a good book educational, but it was a bit too complicated for an educational book. Books about Liberty are quite interesting and i might want to read some more of these books.

I’m kind of the same as Cato, because he and I kind of agree that empire’s aren’t good. And we both don’t like corruption. But i’m not the only one who is similar to Cato. There is also George Washington. They both are true to liberty and try to make it thrive in their country and defeat dictatorship. Only Washington succeeded and Cato failed in a way.

This book also tought some other things about Cato’s time. It tought me that even the Roman republic was in chaos. Not only today’s world. It also tought me that the transformation from republic to dictatorship wasn’t that smooth.

The purpose of the book was bringing to life what Cato did in his life and the issues with these things.

The book had quite a few hard words in the book but i couldn’t understand most of them. Some people that aren’t that good at reading might have difficulties reading this book. The subject of the book was pretty interesting and it didn’t make me lose interest.

Before I read the book I knew things about the Roman empire and Ceaser and other Roman things, but i didn’t know what exactly happened during the time when Caesar was changing the Republic into an empire. While reading the book I learnt a lot about Cato and other important people in the book(Cicero, Pompey Caesar, etc) I learnt that I like Cato a lot, because he fits my Libertarian view and I also realized Caesar wasn’t as good as i thought he was. The book made me like Caesar less.

I would definetly recommend this biography to someone else, because it tells you about what happened during that time period and you’ll learn about Liberty.