Cato had found little happiness in his party, even when Pompey was alive; and now that he was dead, his situation was quite wretched. They were going on in Africa in the most savage manner, and it was with very great trouble indeed that he saved Utica: they had wanted to plunder it, on pretence of the inhabitants being friendly to Cæsar, but in reality to preserve the goodwill of the soldiers. For this, the inhabitants of Utica considered Cato as their saviour, and the town remained quiet, as he had pledged himself that it should. When Cæsar appeared before Utica, Cato advised every one not to prolong their resistance. The generals, and those who were able to bear arms, had fled; so that the garrison consisted mostly of old people and gentlemen of rank: he therefore counselled them to throw themselves on Cæsar’s mercy, bidding even his own son go out and do it. Here he in a fine manner showed himself inconsistent, the father getting the better of the Stoic: he said that he could not indeed live now, he who had seen the better days of the republic; but that his son, who had never known the republic, might embark in the new state of things. The night before the town was to open its gates, he retired to his room and read the Phædo, surely not to find in it the strengthening of his belief in the immortality of the soul, and of his hopes:—of this he had no need; for as a Stoic he believed in immortality, and moreover the Phædo itself does not give this faith to those who have it not:—but as in terrible moments one must find breathing-room for one’s feelings, so he sought for support in the example of a great man, and he very likely was much more taken up with that part of the work in which Socrates’ death is told. He took leave of the world, turning his mind to the contemplation of the last hours of one of the most virtuous men on earth. He then gave himself the deadly wound. But he fell from the bed in the agonies of death; and when his son and his friends tried to recover him, having pretended to slumber, he tore the wound open, and let his bowels gush out.—The reduction of the other towns was easy enough. The son of Juba surrendered to Cæsar, and afterwards had such an excellent education bestowed upon him at Rome, that he became one of the most learned men of his time. As he undoubtedly was master of the Punic language, the loss of his books on historical and geographical topics, is very much to be regretted; for in the historical ones, he must have given the substance of what the Carthaginians have written.