What Was the Republic?

You remind me, Philokles, how cautious we must be whenever we speak of a republic, as though the word itself possessed a single and unchanging meaning. For if history teaches us anything, it is that men often employ the same noble terms while intending very different things by them.

Consider, for instance, what happened long after the days of the elder Cato. There arose in Rome a man of great ability and terrible determination—Lucius Cornelius Sulla—who, though he sprang from the magistracies and constitutional forms of the Republic itself, ended by seizing absolute power and ruling the state as a dictator in all but name. Yet this same man believed, or at least declared, that he was acting as the saviour and restorer of that very Republic which his actions seemed in many respects to overthrow.

When we reflect upon such examples, it becomes difficult to treat the word republic as though it were a simple and self-evident thing. For one man calls the Republic the rule of law, another the authority of the Senate, another the liberty of the citizens, and yet another the preservation of ancestral custom. And each believes himself its defender even while altering its substance.

If that is so, Philokles, must we not admit that the language we employ—words such as republic, virtue, or even wisdom—may easily lead us astray if we accept them too readily? For these words seem noble enough when spoken, yet they conceal beneath their dignity a great variety of meanings and intentions.

Tell me then: do you agree that before we judge men like the two Catos—or even men such as Sulla—we must first inquire more carefully what they themselves believed the Republic to be? For otherwise we may praise or condemn them while speaking about something quite different from what they themselves imagined they were defending.

You speak with admirable caution, Lucius, and in truth you have touched upon a difficulty that has troubled thoughtful men in every age that has reflected upon politics. For words such as republic, virtue, and wisdom possess a noble sound, and because of that nobility they are repeated often, invoked solemnly, and inscribed upon monuments. Yet the more venerable a word becomes, the more easily it may conceal uncertainty beneath the dignity of tradition.

Indeed, if we examine the matter closely, we may discover that few words in political language are more ambiguous than the word republic itself.

The Romans, as you know, spoke of their state as the res publica, which in its simplest sense means nothing more mysterious than “the public thing,” or “the common affair of the people.” In this modest expression there was originally no elaborate theory of government. It did not signify a precise constitution, nor a carefully defined system of political rights. It meant rather that the affairs of the city were not the private property of a king but belonged, at least in principle, to the community.

Yet from this simple beginning a multitude of interpretations arose. Some believed the Republic resided above all in the authority of the Senate and the dignity of the aristocratic order. Others saw it in the liberties of the citizen body and the power of the assemblies. Others again believed it consisted chiefly in the maintenance of ancestral custom, those unwritten habits of conduct which the Romans called the mos maiorum.

Now observe the difficulty that follows from this diversity of meaning. A man might sincerely believe that he was defending the Republic while in fact defending only one element of it, perhaps even at the expense of the others. Another might alter the structure of the state in dramatic ways while persuading himself that he was merely restoring its true spirit.

Your example of Sulla illustrates this point with unusual clarity.

For Sulla did not proclaim himself the destroyer of the Republic. Quite the opposite. He declared that he was rescuing it from disorder and corruption. He restored the authority of the Senate, curtailed the powers of the tribunes, and attempted to fix the machinery of government in a form which he believed would protect the traditional ruling class from the turbulence of popular politics. In his own mind—if we judge by his proclamations and by the structure of his reforms—he was not a tyrant overthrowing the Republic but a surgeon cutting away the diseased parts of a constitution that had fallen into chaos.

Yet the paradox, as you rightly suggest, is that the means by which he accomplished this restoration were themselves profoundly destructive of republican habit. He marched upon Rome with an army, proscribed citizens by the hundreds, and held power in a manner that accustomed the Roman world to the spectacle of a single will dominating the state. Thus a man who believed himself the saviour of the Republic may also be said to have weakened the very foundations upon which republican life depends.

Here we see clearly how the language of virtue and restoration can become treacherous guides.

The same ambiguity appears when we speak of wisdom. One man calls it wisdom to preserve the authority of tradition against every innovation. Another calls it wisdom to adapt institutions boldly to new circumstances. Both claim the title of wise statesman, and each can marshal arguments drawn from history to support his claim.

Virtue, too, suffers from this multiplicity of meanings. To the Roman of the older generation, virtue often meant severity, discipline, and the willingness to subordinate private feeling to the welfare of the state. But to the philosopher trained in the broader schools of Greece, virtue might also include moderation, justice tempered by mercy, and a reflective understanding of human frailty.

When such different conceptions inhabit the same language, confusion becomes almost inevitable.

This is why your suggestion is not only reasonable but necessary: that we must inquire what men themselves believed the Republic to be before we judge their conduct in its name. Otherwise we risk praising a man for defending something he never intended to defend, or condemning him for destroying something he believed he was preserving.

And this question, Lucius, becomes especially important when we return to the two Catos.

For the elder Cato understood the Republic chiefly as a moral order founded upon the discipline and simplicity of its ruling class. The younger Cato, inheriting this vision, came to believe that the Republic could be preserved only by an uncompromising defence of its traditional forms and by resistance to those ambitious men who sought to reshape the state through extraordinary power.

But whether this understanding of the Republic was still adequate for the vast and complicated empire Rome had become—that is precisely the question which history forces us to examine.

You see therefore how our discussion gradually approaches the younger Cato himself. For before we can judge his actions against Caesar or his refusal of compromise in the final years of the Republic, we must first understand what sort of Republic he imagined himself defending.

And here I would ask you, Lucius, something that may guide our inquiry further. When you think of the Roman Republic at the time of Caesar and Cato, do you imagine it primarily as a constitutional structure of laws and magistracies—or as a moral order resting upon the character and traditions of the Roman aristocracy? For the answer to that question may determine how we judge the conduct of both men.

That indeed, Philokles, appears to me a most difficult question to answer. For it would seem almost a task fit for the gods themselves to decide between these two things: on the one hand the visible structure of laws, magistracies, and institutions devised by men; and on the other the invisible moral order which rests upon tradition, religion, and the beliefs of a people about themselves and their ancestors.

For when we speak of a republic, it is not always clear whether we mean the framework of offices and procedures by which the state is governed, or the spirit which animates those forms—the habits of character, the reverence for the gods, the inherited customs, and that sense of duty which men believe binds them to their forefathers and their descendants alike.

And here, if I may speak frankly, I perceive what seems to me one of the greatest contradictions whenever we discuss the great figures of antiquity and the crises in which they acted. For those men themselves often believed that the moral order and the political order were inseparable: that the laws were merely the outward expression of an older and deeper harmony between the city, the gods, and the traditions of their ancestors.

Yet when later generations look back upon these same events, they are often tempted to separate what those men believed to be united. They analyze constitutions as structures, examine magistracies as mechanisms of power, and treat religion and tradition as though they were ornaments added to politics rather than foundations upon which political life itself once rested.

Thus we may find ourselves judging men like the two Catos, or even men such as Caesar, by standards that divide what they themselves experienced as one indivisible order. And that, it seems to me, makes our inquiry both more difficult and more delicate.

For tell me, Philokles if the Roman Republic was at once a system of institutions created by men and a moral world sustained by belief, tradition, and reverence, how are we to judge those who believed they were defending it? Should we measure them by the stability of the institutions they preserved, or by the sincerity with which they upheld that older moral vision which they believed gave those institutions their meaning?

You express the matter with admirable seriousness, Lucius, and indeed the difficulty you describe is one that confronts every thoughtful observer of antiquity. For the Romans themselves rarely separated the visible machinery of their state from the invisible order of beliefs that sustained it. To them the Republic was not merely a structure of offices, assemblies, and legal procedures. It was also a moral inheritance—a living chain binding the present generation to the authority of its ancestors and, through them, to the favour of the gods.

In such a world the distinction which we are tempted to draw—between constitutional form on the one hand and moral or religious conviction on the other—would have appeared almost artificial. The Roman citizen who stood in the Forum to vote, the magistrate who presided over the courts, the general who sacrificed before battle, all believed themselves to be participating in the same order. The laws were not thought to exist independently of tradition; they were believed to arise from it. Nor were religious rites merely private matters of devotion; they were woven into the very fabric of political life.

Yet precisely because these two elements—institutions and moral belief—were so closely intertwined, their relationship became fragile when circumstances changed.

For as Rome expanded across the Mediterranean, wealth poured into the city, foreign ideas multiplied, and political competition among the elite intensified. The old harmony between custom, religion, and political authority began slowly to loosen. Laws could be manipulated; magistracies became prizes in the contests of ambitious men; ancestral traditions were invoked more often as slogans than as genuine guides to conduct.

It was at this moment of tension, when the outward forms of the Republic still stood but the moral unity beneath them had begun to fracture, that figures such as the younger Cato emerged.

And here, Lucius, we arrive at the man whom you first asked about.

Marcus Porcius Cato—whom later generations would call Cato Uticensis—was born in the year when the Roman world was already entering the storms that would eventually destroy the Republic. He lost his parents at an early age and was raised under the care of his maternal uncle, Marcus Livius Drusus, a man of considerable influence and ambition whose own political career would end violently. Thus the boy grew up not in tranquil obscurity but in the midst of those conflicts that were already shaking the foundations of Roman society.

Ancient writers delight in recounting stories from his childhood, and although such stories often acquire a certain embellishment over time, they nevertheless reveal how his character was remembered. They describe a boy unusually grave, resistant to persuasion, stubborn in his judgments, and already displaying that stern sense of independence which later made him famous—and notorious.

One anecdote is frequently repeated. During the dictatorship of Sulla, when many Roman nobles came to pay their respects to the ruler, the young Cato is said to have asked his tutor why no one simply killed the tyrant and liberated the state. The tutor, startled by the boldness of the question, explained that the dictator was protected by guards and that such a deed would bring death upon the assassin. To this the boy allegedly replied that he would gladly risk his life if only he could free Rome.

Whether this story is entirely accurate matters less than the impression it conveys. Even as a child, Cato was remembered as a person for whom moral judgement admitted little compromise. The world appeared to him in clear and severe contrasts—justice and injustice, liberty and tyranny, virtue and corruption. Such clarity may be admirable in a young mind; yet in the complex world of politics it often proves difficult to sustain without producing conflict.

As he grew older, this disposition hardened rather than softened. Unlike many young aristocrats of his generation, he did not cultivate elegance or charm. He preferred simplicity in dress, moderation in food, and a life that consciously imitated the austerity associated with the ancient Romans of legend. Philosophy, particularly the Stoic school, exerted a powerful influence upon him. From it he absorbed the belief that virtue alone is truly good and that the wise man must remain steadfast even in the face of danger, fortune, or public disapproval.

Thus by the time he entered public life, Cato had already fashioned himself—perhaps unconsciously, perhaps deliberately—into a living image of the severe republican virtue associated with his ancestor, the Censor.

But here we must pause, Lucius, and observe something that will become increasingly important as our discussion proceeds.

For the Rome into which the younger Cato stepped was no longer the Rome of the Punic Wars. It was a vast imperial power filled with wealth, factions, ambitious generals, and competing visions of how such an enormous state should be governed. Men like Pompey and Caesar commanded armies whose loyalty sometimes rivalled that of the Senate itself. Political alliances were formed and dissolved with startling rapidity. The old equilibrium of the Republic had begun to falter.

Into this turbulent world came a man whose character had been formed by ideals of rigid moral constancy and by the example—real or imagined—of an ancestor who seemed to embody the virtues of an earlier age.

Whether such a character was precisely what Rome needed at that moment, or whether it represented a noble but ultimately impractical attempt to revive a past that could no longer return, is the question that has divided historians ever since.

But before we consider his actions in the Senate, his opposition to Caesar, and the tragic end that made him famous throughout the ages, perhaps we should first look more closely at the formation of his mind.

Tell me, Lucius: do you believe that the character of a statesman is shaped more by the education he receives in philosophy, or by the political storms through which he passes in his youth? For in the life of Cato the Younger both forces seem to have worked with unusual intensity.