With the subtitle The Rivalry That Destroyed the Roman Republic, this volume is a fast-paced story that tells how the clash between two titans of ancient politics, fueled by the gasoline of an eternal personal dispute, led their country to the precipice.
For the American historian Josiah Osgood, the episodes of the political rivalry of Caesar and Cato are milestones in the history of the last years of the Roman Republic. The author describes the period in its essentials, focusing his attention on society, politics or religion, but also on that feminine universe where women were often mere cards to be thrown on the table of confrontation.
And although Osgood stops to narrate the key episodes of the moment, from the Catiline conspiracy, which caused the enmity between Caesar and Cato, to the civil war, through the conquest of Gaul or some debates in the Forum, this is, fundamentally, the story of two opposite characters.
One, that of Caesar, desirous of recognition, addicted to the people and unrepentant spender. The other, that of Cato, scourge of corruption, austere and so irreducible in his approach that Cicero even said of him that he seemed to “live in Plato’s republic, and not in the sewers of Romulus.”
This does not mean that Osgood does not describe other great characters, such as Pompey, Cicero or Crassus, but they participate in the story as troupes. It is appreciated, above all, to distinguish Cato, a prominent champion of the optimates who often appears in essays and novels only as Caesar’s nemesis.
In this book, Cato continues to be that fearsome adversary, but he acquires a well-deserved prominence. Thanks to this, the reader will be able to learn more about a relevant politician, whose biography Osgood adds with a good number of anecdotes that help define him.
This volume is also a reflection on how political obstructions, the masterstrokes with the tribunes of the plebs or the use of violence brought about the Empire and ended the Republic. The story of a collective failure with an underlying current that Osgood insists on a lot. The “partisanship that justifies almost everything and destroys trust” lays the foundations, yesterday and today, on which “disasters begin to chain themselves.”
