as sent a kind of necessity; and Cato might conceive, as he did
conceive, that the necessity had come to him.

The suicide of Cato was a peculiar case and hardly belongs to the more
general cases of suicide. His position, if he had lived under the
domination of Caesar, would have been intolerable to a man of his
principles; for that he might have lived by Caesar's grace, if he had
chosen, can hardly be doubted notwithstanding Caesar wrote his
Anticatones.]

[Footnote 755: This was P. Licinius Crassus Junianus, a Junius who had
been adopted by a Crassus, as the name shows.]

[Footnote 756: [Greek: ede d' ornithes edon]. The translators do not
agree about these words. Dacier and others translate them literally,
as I have done. Kaltwasser translated them, "and already the cocks
crowed." He adds that the other translation is wrong, because it is
said immediately after, that it was still night. But what follows as
to the night does not prove that it was dark; it rather implies that
there was not much sleeping time that remained before morning. Cocks
sometimes crow in the night, it is true, but Plutarch evidently means
to show by the expression that the morning was dawning, and so the
birds might be singing, if there were any birds in Utica. The matter
is appropriate for a dissertation, which would be as instructive as
many other dissertations on matters of antiquity.]

[Footnote 757: Appian (_Civil Wars_, ii. 98, &c.) tells the story of
his death differently. He says that the wound was sewed up, and that
being left alone, he tore his bowels out. But it is improbable that,
if the wound had been sewed up, he would have been left alone. The
story of Dion Cassius (43, c. 11) is the same. See Florus, iv. 2, 71,
who says that he killed himself "circa primam vigiliam."]

[Footnote 758: As he died in B.C. 46, he was in the forty-ninth year
of his age. His chatacter requires no comment; it has been fully
delineated by Plutarch. A single letter of Cato to Cicero is extant
(_Ad Diversos_, xv. 5); and a letter of such a man is worth reading,
though it be short. His speech against the conspirators, which Sallust
has given, may contain the matter, but not the words of Cato.]

[Footnote 759: He had his father's property. After Caesar's death he
joined M. Brutus, the husband of his sister Portia, and fell at
Philippi B.C. 42. This son of Cato had a younger brother (c. 52),
whose mother was Marcia, but nothing more is known of him. The