ll bundle of essays and then
gives them to the world. Each of them has done well at its time, but
that has not sufficed for his ambition; therefore they are dragged out
into the light and put forward with a separate claim for attention, as
though they could stand well on their own legs. But they cannot stand
alone, and they fall from having been put into a position other than
that for which they were intended when written.

CHAPTER VII.

_MARCELLUS, LIGARIUS, AND DEIOTARUS._

[Sidenote: B.C. 46, aetat. 61.]

The battle of Thapsus, in Africa, took place in the spring of this year,
and Cato destroyed himself with true stoical tranquillity, determined
not to live under Caesar's rule. If we may believe the story which,
probably, Hirtius has given us, in his account of the civil war in
Africa, and which has come down to us together with Caesar's
Commentaries, Cato left his last instructions to some of his officers,
and then took his sword into his bed with him and stabbed himself.
Cicero, who, in his dream of Scipio, has given his readers such
excellent advice in regard to suicide, has understood that Cato must be
allowed the praise of acting up to his own principles. He would die
rather than behold the face of the tyrant who had enslaved him.[140] To
Cato it was nothing that he should leave to others the burden of living
under Caesar; but to himself the idea of a superior caused an unendurable
affront. The "Catonis nobile letum" has reconciled itself to the poets
of all ages. Men, indeed, have refused to see that he fled from a danger
which he felt to be too much for him, and that in doing so he had lacked
something of the courage of a man. Many other Romans of the time did the
same thing, but to none has been given all the honor which has been
allowed to Cato.

Cicero felt as others have done, and allowed all his little jealousies
to die away. It was but a short time before that Cato had voted against
the decree of the Senate giving Cicero his "supplication." Cicero had
then been much annoyed; but now Cato had died fighting for the Republic,
and was to be forgiven all personal offences. Cicero wrote a eulogy of
Cato which was known by the name of Cato, and was much discussed at Rome
at the time. It has now been lost. He sent it to Caesar, having been bold
enough to say in it whatever occurred to him should be said in Cato's
praise. We may imagine that, had it not pleased him to be generous--had
he not been go