Note to JULIUS CAESAR, 5.1.101, Cato's suicide
The Cato of whom Brutus speaks is known either as Cato the Younger (to distinguish him from his famous great-grandfather) or as Cato of Utica, because of the way in which he ended his life there. Trapped in Utica, a town on the northern coast of Africa, with Caesar's forces approaching, Cato realized that he could not mount a defense, so he arranged for the escape of his supporters and then killed himself rather than submit to Caesar's tyranny.
Painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, 1797
Here is Plutarch's description of the end of Cato's life:
[His first thrust of his sword into himself] killed him not presently, but drawing on to his latter ende, he fell downe upon his bedde, and made such a noyse with his fall (overthrowing a litle table of geometry hard by his bedde) that his servaunts hearing the noyse, gave a great shreeke for fear. Thereuppon his sonne and his friendes ranne into the chamber, and found him all of gore bloud, and the most part of his bowells comming out of his bodye, himself being yet alive, and seeing them. They were all striken with such sorow to behold it, that at the first they were so amazed, as they could not tel what to say to it. His Phisitian comming to him, he went about to put in his bowels againe which were not perished, and to sow up is wound. But Cato comming to him selfe, thrust backe the Phisitian, and tare his bowells with his owne handes, and made his wound very great, and immediatly gave up the ghost.1
1Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives of the- Noble Grecians and Romans Englished by Sir Thomas North. Trans. Sir Thomas North. Vol. 5 (1579. London: David Nutt, 1896.) 177-8.
