Although it began to look over time as if this might not, after all, be the final outcome, it was still possible at this stage to give Caesar the benefit of the doubt. So all-embracing and deeply rooted was the idea of the constitution’s permanence that it took a year or two before suspicions of his revolutionary intentions hardened into certainty that the days of the Republic were over for good. In the meantime Cato’s final act of defiance, his deliberate rejection of Caesar’s tyranny and by extension of all political servitude, harshly dramatized half-spoken
Catos suicide consequences
