Roma Numismatics Ltd
E-Sale 78 17 Dec 2020
View prices realized
► Sale information
Find similar lots
M. Porcius Cato AR Denarius. Utica, 47-46 BC. Draped bust of Roma right, with hair tied in fillet; M•CATO•PRO•PR before / Victory seated right, holding patera; VICTRIX in exergue. Crawford 462/1c; Sydenham 1052; RSC Porcia 9. 3.91g, 16mm, 1h.
Good Very Fine; attractively toned with iridescent highlights.
From a private European collection.
Marcus Porcius Cato, better known as Cato the Younger, was the epitome of the strict and conservative Roman. His tenacity in refusing to give in to what he perceived to be the moral corruption of Rome and its politics in the last years of the Republic led him into opposing Caesar. After the defeat of the Pompeian forces at Pharsalus, Cato helped to gather troops to continue the fight in Utica in North Africa. Following the defeat of the Republican forces in the Battle of Thapsus, the stubborn Cato refused to allow Caesar even the power to grant him his life, and committed suicide.
A noted adherent of Stoic philosophy, Cato was taken as a Republican martyr or Stoic ideal by various Republican-supporting figures in Roman politics over the Imperatorial years, and his suicide was a template for like-minded men in generations to come, particularly the stream of public figures committing suicide in the 1st Century AD, such as Seneca the Younger and the poet Lucan. Cato is familiar to readers of the Aeneid, too, in which work he is a hero in the Underworld. Likewise, he is portrayed favourably (for a pagan) by Dante in his Divine Comedy, as the guardian of the Mount of Purgatory: 'I saw close by me a solitary old man, worthy, by his appearance, of so much reverence that never son owed father more.'
Good Very Fine; attractively toned with iridescent highlights.
From a private European collection.
Marcus Porcius Cato, better known as Cato the Younger, was the epitome of the strict and conservative Roman. His tenacity in refusing to give in to what he perceived to be the moral corruption of Rome and its politics in the last years of the Republic led him into opposing Caesar. After the defeat of the Pompeian forces at Pharsalus, Cato helped to gather troops to continue the fight in Utica in North Africa. Following the defeat of the Republican forces in the Battle of Thapsus, the stubborn Cato refused to allow Caesar even the power to grant him his life, and committed suicide.
A noted adherent of Stoic philosophy, Cato was taken as a Republican martyr or Stoic ideal by various Republican-supporting figures in Roman politics over the Imperatorial years, and his suicide was a template for like-minded men in generations to come, particularly the stream of public figures committing suicide in the 1st Century AD, such as Seneca the Younger and the poet Lucan. Cato is familiar to readers of the Aeneid, too, in which work he is a hero in the Underworld. Likewise, he is portrayed favourably (for a pagan) by Dante in his Divine Comedy, as the guardian of the Mount of Purgatory: 'I saw close by me a solitary old man, worthy, by his appearance, of so much reverence that never son owed father more.'