Eva Carrara (Florida State University)
Scholars have long noted that the famous saying of Cato the Elder, “Carthage must be destroyed” (Carthago delenda est), is likely apocryphal (Dubuission 2000). But what is less often noted is that Cicero’s De senectute is the earliest surviving evidence for Cato’s support for the Third Punic War (Cic. Sen. 18-19). In this paper, I examine Cicero’s version of the anecdote—delivered in the dialogic Cato’s voice—in context of the plausibility and historicity of the dialogue’s setting in the penultimate year of Cato’s life.
In this paper, I identify five elements common to most authors’ accounts of this dictum: 1. Cato repeatedly gives his opinion in the senate; 2. his opinion is that Carthage should not exist or should be destroyed; 3. Scipio Nasica debated Cato in favor of leaving Carthage alone; 4. Cato approved of Scipio Aemilianus as leader; and 5. Cato died before the destruction could be completed. Of these elements at Sen. 18-19, Cicero’s Cato omits Scipio Nasica’s opposition and emphasizes his own approval of Scipio Aemilianus as leader (in the footsteps of his adoptive grandfather, Scipio Africanus). Scholars have suggested that Cicero thus idealizes the imagined reconciliation between elite men in the second century BCE (e.g. Carsana and Schettino 2019; Narducci 1989; Kammer 1964). I argue, however, that this idealization runs counter to Cicero’s typical characterization of Cato as embroiled in political enmities, especially with Ser. Sulpicius Galba, against whom Cato delivered a speech in the last year of his life, 149 BCE (Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi orat. XLI).
By surveying Cicero’s corpus, I demonstrate that the single most frequently discussed aspect of Cato’s old age are his continuing political enmities, particularly with Galba, (e.g. Brut. 89, Div. Caec. 66, Verr. 2.5.180, Sull. 23, De or. 1.227, Rep. 1.1). I also show that Cicero rarely mentions Cato and the Third Punic War together. Cicero’s elderly Cato in De senectute, however, mentions Carthage but never Galba. I thus reconsider these events of Cato’s final two years in light of these prevailing trends in Cicero’s corpus and in light of current scholarship which suggests that Cicero’s philosophical dialogues aimed for fictional plausibility, not for accurate characterization (Bishop 2019; Hermand 2010). Thus, I suggest that the specific dramatic date of 150 BCE (Sen. 14) given by the dialogic Cato is meaningfully specific: it allows the dialogue to include the dictum and reconciliation with the Scipiones Africani, but also to omit the speech against Galba. I argue that Cicero’s precise setting of the dialogue helps maintain plausibility with readers who may have noticed that the last years of Cato’s life in De senectute differ from how Cicero typically represents them. This conclusion has ramifications for our understanding of both De senectute’s historical value and Cicero’s method of composition.