Cato the Younger (or Cato of Utica) was an intriguing and brilliant Roman philosopher (Stoic school) statesman (Senator) and politician with strong conservative views. One who was blessed with unshakable integrity. Voici is his story as told by the Greek historian and biographer Plutarch.
Cato was a source of intellectual guidance for revolutionaries during the Enlightenment. Dante immortalizes Cato in The Divine Comedy. In Canto I, Dante writes of Cato:
I saw close by me a solitary old man, worthy, by his appearance, of so much reverence that never son owed father more. Long was his beard and mixed with white hair, similar to the hairs of his head, which fell to his breast in two strands. The rays of the four holy lights so adorned his face with brightness that I saw him as if the sun had been before him.
Cato's life is immortalized in Joseph Addison's play, Cato, A Tragedy, which George Washington often quoted and had performed during the winter at Valley Forge, in spite of a Congressional ban on such performances.
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