Cato, a Tragedy

Marcia and Lucia speak in a chamber. Marcia explains she cannot be with Juba because of her father, but she does not want to be with Sempronius. “I like not that loud, boist’rous man,” she says (43). The two exit and Sempronius enters, disguised as Juba. He is soon met by the real Juba, however, and though Sempronius attempts to attack him, Juba stabs Sempronius first. “Am I then doom’d to fall / By a boy’s hand, disfigured in a vile / Numidian dress, and for a worthless woman?” Sempronius asks before he dies (44).

Juba exits and Marcia and Lucia enter, finding Sempronius’s body. Marcia mistakes it for Juba and mourns him, calling him the “best of men” (45). Juba overhears this and reveals himself, and Marcia admits that her “love […] has broke through all / Its weak restraints” and she cannot conceal it any longer (47). She leaves and wishes Juba well in war, telling him to “prosper in the paths of honour” so that his “virtue will excuse my passion for thee” (47). Juba resolves that his fate in battle does not matter as much to him as his fate with Marcia, saying, “Let Caesar have the world, if Marcia’s mine” (47).

In Scene 2, Cato and Lucius are talking when Portius enters and reports that Syphax is attacking Marcus’s troops. Cato tells Portius to go and see that “Marcus acts a Roman’s part” (48), expressing sadness to Lucius that “the conquer’d world / Is Caesar’s” (49). Lucius attempts to convince Cato to give up so that he can stay alive and “reconcile thy mighty soul to life” (49). Juba enters and Cato praises his virtue before Portius re-enters, telling Cato that Marcus killed Syphax and was then killed himself in battle. Cato praises Marcus for dying for Rome, saying, “Thanks to the gods, my boy has done his duty,” and Marcus’s corpse is brought into the room (50). “How beautiful is death, when earned by virtue!” Cato exclaims before praising Rome; Juba expresses surprise that “Rome fills [Cato’s] eyes / With tears, that flow’d not o’er his own dear son” (51).

Cato admits that Caesar has been victorious and tells his friends that while he is “out of danger,” he wishes for them to be safe and ask Caesar for mercy (52). “Let [Caesar] know, / Whate’er was done against him, Cato did it,” Cato says, adding that they should ask Caesar that “the virtue of my friends may pass unpunish’d” (52). Cato tells Portius that he should retire to the “Sabine field” and lead a “rural life” away from the others (52). “When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, / The post of honour is a private station,” he says, and Portius hopes that Cato isn’t recommending “a life to Portius that he scorns himself” (52). Cato bids his friends farewell and tells them that there are ships prepared that can take the men anywhere they want if they “dare not trust the victor’s clemency” (53).