Montaigne's regard for Cato the Younger

Cato was a figure of strong fascination for Montaigne, who wrote about him in several of his Essays. This brief note, found in Of Cato the Younger, Essays 1.36, suggests something of the special place the Roman held in the Renaissance writer's eyes:

I . . . shall therefore only set five Latin poets together, contending in the praise of Cato; and, incidentally, for their own too. Now, a well-educated child will judge the two first, in comparison of the others, a little flat and languid; the third more vigorous, but overthrown by the extravagance of his own force; he will then think that there will be room for one or two gradations of invention to come to the fourth, and, mounting to the pitch of that, he will lift up his hands in admiration; coming to the last, the first by some space' (but a space that he will swear is not to be filled up by any human wit), he will be astounded, he will not know where he is.

But our poets are beginning their career:

     "Sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Caesare major,"

 ["Let Cato, whilst he live, be greater than Caesar."
 —Martial, vi. 32]

says one.

               "Et invictum, devicta morte, Catonem,"

      ["And Cato invincible, death being overcome."
      —Manilius, Astron., iv. 87.]

says the second. And the third, speaking of the civil wars betwixt Caesar and Pompey,

          "Victrix causa diis placuit, set victa Catoni."

 ["The victorious cause blessed the gods,
the defeated one Cato."
 —Lucan, i. 128.]

And the fourth, upon the praises of Caesar:

              "Et cuncta terrarum subacta,
               Praeter atrocem animum Catonis."

 ["And conquered all but the indomitable mind of Cato."
 —Horace, Od., ii. 1, 23.]

And the master of the choir, after having set forth all the great names of the greatest Romans, ends thus:

                    "His dantem jura Catonem."

 ["Cato giving laws to all the rest."—AEneid, viii. 670.]