It is tempting to see flashes of personal anger in the Anticato, although it is worth remembering that political invective at Rome was often wildly exaggerated and frequently vulgar. Cato had hated Caesar bitterly, had frustrated him in a number of their public encounters and, finally, had played a major part in causing the Civil War. ‘They wanted this’ – Caesar’s comment at Pharsalus could most of all be applied to Cato, the man whose implacable hostility had, he felt, forced him to cross the Rubicon, to fight and to kill so many fellow citizens and tear the Roman world apart. From his point
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