When Caesar arrived at Utica he found the whole city in mourning. Bitterly, he addressed the man who had for so long been his nemesis, newly laid, like Pompey, in a grave beside the sea: ‘Just as you envied me the chance of sparing you, Cato, so I envy you this death.’17 Caesar was hardly the man to appreciate being cheated of a grand gesture. There had been no one more identified with the flinty spirit of Roman liberty than Cato, and to have pardoned him would have been to destroy his infuriating hold on the Republic’s imagination. Instead, thanks to the gory heroism of his death, that hold
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