isthmus, surrounding him with overwhelming numbers, and thus cutting him off from the mainland. But Cæsar broke through, first defeated the Romans, and then Juba, on the same day, and scattered their hosts. As soon as the battle was won, the soldiers went over to him in throngs: Juba was so utterly done for, that he fled from his kingdom. All was lost: Juba and Petreius took away each other’s life; Cato remained behind in Utica with a Roman garrison. If there be indeed a great man in Roman history who deserves his fame, it is Cato. Cæsar has tried to disparage his virtue; but this arose from a pardonable feeling of irritation. After Cato’s death, Cicero wrote his celebrated _laudatio M. Catonis_;—would to heaven that we had it still! we should be able to discover from it Cicero’s inmost soul. This work does great honour, as well to Cicero, for having had the courage to write it, as to Cæsar for having borne with it: one sees how sincerely people believed in Cæsar’s magnanimity. When Cæsar says that Cato had harmed him by his death, as he had thus robbed him of the pleasure of pardoning him, not a word can be added: on the other hand, one may easily believe that Cæsar still felt hurt by Cicero’s eulogium. He therefore wrote the Anti-Cato, in which he may have displayed a bitterness of passion which in real life, he would certainly have as little shown to Cicero as to Cato himself. There was nothing that he so much wished for as Cato’s friendship, though indeed Cato could not have given it him. The Stoic philosophy did not raise up any heroes among the Greeks, except the great founders Zeno and Cleanthes himself; but while not one Greek statesman professed it, among the Romans, all the great and virtuous public men were either its disciples, or at least, like Cicero, its admirers. It would be the most detestable misconstruing of human virtue, to call Cato’s integrity in question; yet it is quite another thing to say that Cato, with his principles and his philosophy, did infinite harm to the commonwealth. He wanted stoutly to uphold every existing institution, and to allow of nothing that bordered upon arbitrary power. It is well known that Cato estranged the Roman knights from the senate, and made enemies of them, thus tearing open the wound which Cicero with very great difficulty had succeeded in closing: he refused to grant the _publicani_ a request which was not at all an unfair one, merely because he deemed that this would be favouring them. This caused a breach which was never healed. On another occasion, Cato was for voting the execution of Catiline and his accomplices; which was quite in accordance with the laws, but a most unhappy measure for the republic. He did not pay the least regard to existing circumstances, and the consequence was, that he made them much worse. But his personal character was above all blame: profligates might rail at him; but no one dared to slander him, and in this he stood above those times.