Cato as Disruptor: Republican ideology and the frustrated imperatores of the 60 s and 50 s BCE

Abstract

Abstract Triumphal policing in the 60 s and 50 s BCE was unusually intense. During this period, nearly all triumphatores were forced to wait for years ad urbem (outside the pomerium) while their petitions were obstructed by their opponents, a trend that certainly contributed to an historically low rate of processions (an average of around one every three years). No figure appears as frequently in our evidence for triumphal policing and obstruction in the late Republic as Cato the Younger. Whereas scholarship has previously discussed his triumphal interventions through familiar (and problematic) lenses (e. g., Cato the “arch-conservative,” Cato the “political nemesis of Caesar,” Cato the “unrealistic citizen of Plato’s Republic”), this piece offers a new reading of Cato’s letter on the topic (Fam. 15.5), contending that Cato’s interest in the triumph was motivated by his anxiety over the use of military achievement to legitimize aristocratic political power. When read correctly and in context, Cato’s beliefs and actions regarding the triumph were revisionist, not conservative; ideological, not personal; and genuinely interested in bringing about tangible change in Roman political culture.