| Summary: | <p>The INTRODUCTION is concerned with the antecedents, the circumstances of writing and the structure of the biography.</p> <p>Its first chapter surveys the successive treatments of Cato's figure in the Roman literature: immediately after his suicide at Utica a great literary controversy around Cato came into being: cicero, and later Brutus, Fadius Gallus and Munatius Rufus wrote laudatory accounts while Caesar and A. Hirtius composed defamatory <u>Anticatones</u>. This theme was also central a few years later in Salluet's <u>Catilinarian Conspiracy</u> and was taken up by the aged Augustus in a rhetorical reply to Brutus. With the completion of the Roman revolution the theme of Cato lost its urgency and relevance and during the early Principate Cato's figure is reduced to a few stereotyped acts and situation discussed in the schools of Rhetoric. Yet under the reign of Claudius and Nero a revival in the interest in Cato takes place: Seneca regards him as the Stoic Saint Incarnate, his nephew Lucan makes him the chief hero of his <u>Pharsalia</u>, while Thrasea Paetus composes a full scale <u>Life of Cato</u>: for the senatorial opposition under Nero Cato's figure again has a political relevance. The reign of Domitian ensures the end of the literary preoccupation with Cato: hero worshippers found in Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus a more recent vintage of martyrs for the cause of libertas.</p>
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