CATO - Böcker

In his preface to the 1998 reissue, Michael Foot wrote, 'Guilty Men was conceived by three London journalists who had formed the habit of meeting on the roof of the Evening Standard offices in Shoe Lane, Fleet Street, just after the the afternoon paper had been put to bed and, maybe, just before the Two Brewers opened across the road.'The book's genesis and publication could hardly have been swifter. Its writing took four days from the 1st to the 4th June 1940: it was published on the 5th July. It is an angry book, indeed, a devastatingly effective polemic. Its target was the appeasers of the 1930s, the leading culprits being Baldwin, Chamberlain and Halifax who had left the country so ill-prepared, and who, by their pusillanimity, had emboldened Hitler and Mussolini; and in the case of the last two still favoured some accommodation with the fascist dictators. In today's parlance, it would be called a wake-up call. It was very successful selling about 200,000 copies. Kenneth Morgan, Michael Foot's biographer, describes the book as consisting of 'a series of brief vignettes of key episodes or personalities, the latter invariably foolish or dishonest.' Michael Foot wrote eight of the chapters, the first and most powerful one being on Dunkirk. Although Michael Foot was the main contributor, and the one who suggested 'Cato' as the umbrella pseudonym, the other two, as Michael Foot would be the first to admit, Peter Howard and Frank Own should not be forgotten. Seventy years on, Guilty Men has not lost its readability and power to enrage.

Cultivated farming advice.Cato (M. Porcius Cato) the elder (234–149 BC) of Tusculum, statesman and soldier, was the first important writer in Latin prose. His speeches, works on jurisprudence and the art of war, his precepts to his son on various subjects, and his great historical work on Rome and Italy are lost. But we have his De Agricultura; terse, severely wise, grimly humorous, it gives rules in various aspects of a farmer’s economy, including even medical and cooking recipes, and reveals interesting details of domestic life.Varro (M. Terentius) of Reate (116–27 BC), renowned for his vast learning, was an antiquarian, historian, philologist, student of science, agriculturist, and poet. He was a republican who was reconciled to Julius Caesar and was marked out by him to supervise an intended national library. Of Varro’s more than seventy works involving hundreds of volumes we have only one on agriculture and country affairs (Rerum Rusticarum) and part of his work on the Latin language (De Lingua Latina; LCL 333, 334), though we know much about his Satires. Each of the three books on country affairs begins with an effective mise en scene and uses dialogue. The first book deals with agriculture and farm management, the second with sheep and oxen, the third with poultry and the keeping of other animals large and small, including bees and fish ponds. There are lively interludes and a graphic background of political events.

Ancient Rome’s original archconservative.M. Porcius Cato (234–149 BC), one of the best-known figures of the middle Roman Republic, remains legendary for his political and military career, especially his staunch opposition to Carthage; his modest way of life; his integrity of character and austere morality; his literary works, composed in a style at once sophisticated and down-to-earth; his pithy sayings; and his drive to define and to champion Roman national character and traditions in the face of challenges from Greek culture. Cato’s legend derived to no small degree from his own distinctive and compelling self-presentation, which established a model later developed and elaborated by Cicero and by subsequent literary and historical authors for centuries to come.This volume and its companion (LCL 552) join the Loeb edition of Cato’s only extant work, On Agriculture (LCL 283), by supplying all testimonia about, and all fragments by or attributed to Cato. Highlights are Origines, the first historical work attested in Latin, a history of Rome from its founding to the onset of the first Punic War, as well as the origins of major Italian cities; his orations, regarded as the beginning of Roman oratory; To His Son Marcus, which inaugurated a Roman tradition of didactic pieces addressed by fathers to their sons; Military Matters; the Poem on Morals; letters; commentaries on civil law; and memorable sayings.

Ancient Rome’s original archconservative.M. Porcius Cato (234–149 BC), one of the best-known figures of the middle Roman Republic, remains legendary for his political and military career, especially his staunch opposition to Carthage; his modest way of life; his integrity of character and austere morality; his literary works, composed in a style at once sophisticated and down-to-earth; his pithy sayings; and his drive to define and to champion Roman national character and traditions in the face of challenges from Greek culture. Cato’s legend derived to no small degree from his own distinctive and compelling self-presentation, which established a model later developed and elaborated by Cicero and by subsequent literary and historical authors for centuries to come.This volume and its companion (LCL 551) join the Loeb edition of Cato’s only extant work, On Agriculture (LCL 283), by supplying all testimonia about, and all fragments by or attributed to Cato. Highlights are Origines, the first historical work attested in Latin, a history of Rome from its founding to the onset of the first Punic War, as well as the origins of major Italian cities; his orations, regarded as the beginning of Roman oratory; To His Son Marcus, which inaugurated a Roman tradition of didactic pieces addressed by fathers to their sons; Military Matters; the Poem on Morals; letters; commentaries on civil law; and memorable sayings.