[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Cato’s relationship to the Greeks is a central topic in dealing with the well-known Roman of the second century BC. A notorious fragment from his Ad filium in which he urgently warns his son about the dangers of Greek medicine and also accuses the Greek physicians of plotting to kill all Romans has even led to comparisons with the anti-Semitic delusion of Soviet dictator Stalin, who at the end of his life feared a conspiracy of Jewish doctors and had them murdered.[1] Nevertheless, many scholars have interpreted Cato’s familiarity with Greek literature and education, attested in his oratory and his literary work, as an indication that his relationship to Greek culture was not led by irrational hatred alone.
The contributions in Caton l’Ancien et l’hellénisme are all of a high standard and testify to the deep knowledge of the authors. It should be emphasized that, while the volume is presented as an “ouvrage collectif” (14), the articles by no means present the one-sided perspective of a particular school of thought: the authors’ assessments of central facets of the problem differ diametrically; not only, for example as to whether or not a ‘primary anti-Hellenism’ can be attributed to Cato, but even more so in the interpretation and weighting of the sources themselves. In addition to these results on Cato’s relationship to the Greeks, the volume contains a number of interesting findings about further aspects of his biography. Unfortunately, the book is available only online via Jstor.org because the publisher went out of business shortly before the release date of the physical volume.
Since the central points of the clearly written individual essays can be summarized well, an overview of all the contributions can be given here, dealing with both their arguments about Cato’s relationship to the Greeks as well as their wider insights.
The first contribution is that of Stein, in which he examines Cato’s rise and the social milieu of his origin in more detail than in previous studies. In contrast to most recent contributions, according to which Cato, as a member of the equestrian order, always belonged to the ‘elite’, Stein emphasizes Cato’s novitas. The author also points out the relevance of the lectio senatus of 216 BC, which in his view promoted the social advancement of an “aristocratie militaire” (29). According to Stein, Cato was a member of this aristocracy. Stein’s further argument that this group, who repeatedly encountered Greeks as military opponents in the conflicts of the time, including in the war against Hannibal, in particular cultivated an aversion to them, must be regarded as largely hypothetical. Overall, however, the article provides an essential approach to the assessment of Cato’s social origins.
In contrast to Stein’s thesis, which posits a clear psychological dimension to Cato’s ‘anti-Hellenism’, Bur’s contribution assumes that Cato’s stance was merely part of a political persona and not really a structuring element in his political thinking. The essay shows how Cato combined novus-ideology and resentment in his self-portrayal to earn ‘symbolic capital’ in the political competition of Rome’s ruling class. This kind of argument is certainly in line with a trend of interpreting the Roman res publica mainly in terms of a specific strand of ‘cultural history’.[2] At the same time, it must be noted that the author draws on a whole range of sources here, which some of the other contributions do not consider meaningful at all or at least interpret quite differently (cf. especially those of Carsana/Schettino and of Stoffel).
Calboli’s contribution reveals a third perspective: Cato is presented here neither as a more or less authentic representative of social mobility (with all its questionable resentments, from a modern point of view), nor as representative of a staged novus-ideology striving for ‘symbolic capital’ by sharpening the contrast to the ‘old nobility’, but rather as an individual led by “cynisme” (104) and as an “opportuniste” (96), in whose person the inherent contradictions of the ruling class are reflected—also with regard to Greeks and Hellenistic culture. Some of the points that are supposed to show Cato’s cynicism and opportunism seem at least debatable to me: there is little ‘cynical’ contradiction between Cato’s preface to De agri cultura and the rest of the text: the preface already clearly emphasizes the profit orientation of his agriculture.[3] The praise of peasant virtue hardly alludes to a contemporary peasantry, which Cato could have driven into bankruptcy through the competition of his own ‘capitalist’ enterprises, but much more to Cato’s (possibly staged) origins as a Sabine farmer, as a vir bonus atque strenuus.[4] One can explain Cato’s seemingly contradictory handling of the subject of money lending very well by a distinction between criminal usury and legitimate money lending, which the Twelve Tables already knew.[5] A discussion of Cato’s speech for the Rhodians is not able to bring any new arguments for the speculative hypothesis according to which Cato was led by ‘opportunistic’ economic motives.
Chassignet’s contribution mostly gives a comprehensive presentation of known research positions. As Astin, Sblendorio Cugusi and others did before, she interprets Cato’s rhetoric as an expression of a ‘natural oratory’ rather than of the study of Greek manuals and instructions. What is particularly noteworthy, even if not a genuinely new finding and maybe not emphasized enough by Chassignet, is the fact that the “pejorative” (113) passages in Cato’s own rhetoric do indeed refer to Roman nobiles and their behavior, not to actual Greeks.
Humm interprets the theory of a Greek descent of the Romans (or rather of their legendary ancestors) in Cato’s Origines in the same way as Dionysius of Halicarnassus did: Cato wanted to counter Greek resentment according to which the Romans were barbarians. This is certainly a valid interpretation, but others have pointed out to the possibility that Cato might have argued against such an ancestry of the Romans. The fragmentary state of the transmission makes this problem unsolvable. It is also noteworthy that Humm gives a more detailed interpretation of the locus classicus of the Ad filium in which Cato admonishes that when dealing with the Greek litterae one must inspicere, but not perdiscere them. The meaning of these two terms in this context has often been misunderstood, by assuming that Cato wanted to forbid an excessive involvement with Greek writings (perdiscere), which to a certain extent ‘rub off’ on the recipient (an interpretation that Pliny clearly had in mind too, cf. Plin. nat. 29,27), but permitted to have a quick look on them (inspicere). Humm quite rightly emphasizes here that, on the contrary, inspicere means an intensive occupation with a subject matter. Still, he seems to understand perdiscere primarily as a dangerous activity in the sense of Pliny.
The contribution by Carsana and Schettino deals with the different layers of tradition that cover up the ‘historical’ Cato. The most important point here is that Polybius as a contemporary source, even if only fragmentarily transmitted in the relevant passages, should still be given precedence. With regard to the question of Cato’s relationship to the Greeks, reading the relevant passages shows that Cato incorporated Greek ideas into his political thinking. This part of the argument only partially convinced me, since some of the passages from ‘Cato’ treated here as analogous to Polybian thought might not be ‘authentic’, but rather Ciceronian. Even more important is the other aspect pointed out by the authors, namely the fact that Cato’s aversion was not primarily directed against Greek culture itself, but rather against a certain way of receiving it by the Roman nobility—above all, by reciting verses from ‘the Classics’ on any occasion. (Precisely at this point one could have gone one step further in the interpretation of the two terms inspicere and perdiscere: the latter does not mean intensive ‘learning by heart’, but rather something that can resonate with the German word ‘Auswendiglernen’, a mindless and soulless memorizing of words without understanding their meaning.[6]) Another indeed very relevant finding of this contribution seems to be the fact that an anti-Catonian layer of tradition almost surely dates back to the time when he was alive and politically active.
The contribution of the late Stoffel is also essential primarily in programmatic terms: the fact that we can only adequately understand Plutarch’s Life of Cato in connection with the one of Aristides with which it forms a pair has been often neglected.[7] In my opinion, Stoffel goes a bit too far when she regards almost all of Plutarch’s statements as being dependent entirely on literary intention. Some central elements, such as Cato’s public commitment to wealth acquisition, which is also interpreted here as a moral result of Cato’s alleged anti-Hellenism, have their basis in older and clearly Catonian layers of the tradition.
Finally, Pittia’s contribution gives an interesting insight into the reception of Cato in the early modern period, when his role as a moral example gained importance and his attitude towards the Greeks as Plutarch describes it increasingly lost its saliency.
The “Conclusion” of the volume’s two editors can ultimately be regarded less as a real conclusion than as a short repetition of some of the positions offered in the volume, combined with some sort of declaration of principle according to which the concepts of Greek or Roman culture are not to be understood in an essentialist manner. This seems to be a methodological statement rather than a research outcome. One would have expected it in the introduction. It might have been interesting here to point out and discuss more explicitly the differences of the single contributions but also the corresponding methodological questions and perspectives on the sources.
The following picture of Cato’s relation to Hellenism emerged from my reading of this volume: contemporary sources offer little more than indications that Cato abhorred the Greek fashion of the Roman nobility, a mindless ‘Auswendiglernen’, and instead relied on genuine reflection as pedagogical principle. The passage from the Ad filium is correctly recognized as a pedagogical writing. (At the beginning of such a work there had to be an apodictic statement, which was meant also to generate fear, and then had to be gradually put into perspective.) The historical Cato himself in his Origines saw no problem in accepting Greeks among the ancestors of the Romans, even with regard to his “own people”, the Sabines, while the reasons for this must remain speculative. The powerful tales of Cato’s personal hatred against anything and anyone Greek are to be seen mostly as the result of Plutarch’s literary and biographical tenets. Cato’s isolated statements about ‘Greeks’ from contemporary sources, namely his oratory, reflect a rhetorical tradition of invective and ‘othering’. In this, Cato might indeed have been exceptional, insofar as he could make it to the top in a patriarchal society of warmongers and slave owners—but his attacks were mostly directed against fellow members of the nobility, not Greeks.
Bibliography
Gratwick 2002, “A Matter of Substance: Cato’s Preface to the De Agri Cultura,” in: Mnemosyne 55. (2002), 41–72.
Hölkeskamp 2020, Roman Republican Reflections. Studies in Politics, Power, and Pageantry, Stuttgart 2020.
Isaac 2004, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, Princeton 2004.
Kuznetsov 2011, “Studies on Cato’s Ad filium,” in: Scripta Classica Israelica 30 (2011), 39–62.
von Lübtow 1989, “Catos Seedarlehen,” in: Gesammelte Schriften. Abteilung I: Römisches Recht 4, Rheinfelden/Freiburg/Berlin, 163–185.
Sansone 1989, Plutarch, Lives: Aristides and Cato, edited with Translation and Commentary, Warminster 1989.
Till 1935, Die Sprache Catos, Leipzig 1935.
Authors and Titles
Clément Bur & Michel Humm, Introduction
Christian Stein, L’ascension du jeune Caton et la rénovation de l’aristocratie républicaine à la fin du iiie siècle av. J.-C.
Clément Bur, L’antihellénisme de Caton l’Ancien: une image publique construite par un homo novus ?
Gualtiero Calboli, Caton l’Ancien, entre tradition romaine et hellénisme contemporain
Martine Chassignet, L’œuvre oratoire de Caton: hellénisme ou latinité?
Michel Humm, Opiques et Aborigènes chez Caton, et les origines grecques des Romains
Chiara Carsana & Maria Teresa Schettino, La construction historiographique de la figure de Caton l’Ancien
Éliane Stoffel †, Le Caton de Plutarque, un anti-Aristide?
Sylvie Pittia, Postérités d’une figure antique: Caton l’Ancien au xviiie siècle
Clément Bur & Michel Humm, Conclusion
Notes
[1] Cf. Isaac 2004, 226–229.
[2] Cf., for example, Hölkeskamp 2020, 64; 66–68.
[3] Cf. Grattwick 2002, 47.
[4] Cf. Till 1935, 25.
[5] Cf. von Lübtow 1989, 178–180.
[6] Cf. Kuznetsov 2011, 46–47.
[7] Stoffel alludes to the Edition of D. Sansone 1989 here.