A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

CATO. CATO. 635
a line which is found in ii. D. 22; the next allu- false quantity in the first syllable of Macer, consion is in Isidorus, who quotes Cato as an autho- tains a most gross blunder, such as no one but an
rity for the rare word officiperda (see iv. D. 42); illiterate monk was likely to commit,-for the
and the third in order of time is in Alcuin, con- Punic wars are spoken of as the subject of Lucan's
temporary with Charlemagne, who cites one of the poem.
Distichs (ii. D. 31) as the words of the "philoso- This Catechism of Morals, as it has been called,
pher Cato." In our own early literature it is fre- seems to have been held in great estimation in the
quently quoted by Chaucer. It is clear, therefore, middle ages, and to have been extensively employthat these saws were familiarly known in the mid- ed as a school-book. This will account for the
die of the fourth century, and recognized from vast number of early editions, more than thirty
that time forward as the composition of some belonging to the fifteenth century, which have
Cato. So, in like manner, all the MSS. agree in proved a source of the greatest interest to bibliograpresenting that name; while for the addition of phers. One of these, on vellum, of which only a
Dionysius we are indebted to a single codex once single copy is known to exist, is in the Spenser
in the possession of Simeon Bos, which was collection, and is believed by Dibdin to be older
inspected by Scaliger and Vinet, and pronounced than the Gottenburg Bible of 1465. The title in
by them of great antiquity. We must remark, the earlier impressions is frequently Cato Moralihowever, that the combination Dionysius Cato is satus, Cato Moralissinmus, Cato Carmen de Moribus,
exceedingly suspicious. Dionysius was a name and so forth.
frequently borne by slaves of Greek extraction; The best edition is that of Otto Arntzenius, 8vo.
but when combined with a Roman name, accord- Amsterdam, 1754, which contains an ample collecing to the fashion among libertini, it was added tion of commentaries; the Greek paraphrases by
as a cognomen to the gentile appellation of the Maximus Planudes and Joseph Scaliger; the dispatron. Thus, C. Julius Dionysius appears in sertations of Boxhorn, written with as much extraan inscription as a freedman of Augustus; so we vagant bitterness as if the author of the Distichs
find P. Aelius Dionysius, and many others; but it had been a personal enemy; the learned but ramdoes not occur prefixed to a Roman cognomen, as bling and almost interminable reply of Cannegieter;
in the present case. Names purely Greek, such and two essays by Withof. These, together with
as Dionysius Socrates, Dionysius Philocalus, and the preliminary notices, contain everything that is
the like, do not of course bear upon the question. worth knowing.
No one now imagines that either of the Catos One of the oldest specimens of English typogracelebrated in history has any connexion with this phy is a translation of Cato by Caxton through the
metrical system of ethics. Aulus Gellius (xi. 2), medium of an earlier French version: THE BOOKE
it is true, gives some fragments of a Carmen de CALLYD CATHON, Translated oute of Frenche into
Moribus in prose by the elder; and Pliny (H. N. Englyssh by William Caxton in thabby of Westxxix. 6) has preserved a passage from the precepts mystre the yere of our lorde Mcccclxxxiij and tIe
delivered by the same sage to his son; but these first yere of the regne of Kyng Rychard the thyrde
were both works of a totally different description, xxiij day of Decemnbre. From the preface to this
and no hint has been given by the ancients that curious volume we learn, that the same task had
anything such as we are now discussing ever pro- previously been accomplished in verse. " Here
ceeded from Cato of Utica. beginneth the prologue or proheme of the book
In truth, we know nothing about this Cato or called Caton, which book hath been translated out
Dionysius Cato, if he is to be so called; and, as of Latin into English, by Maister Benet Burgh,
we have no means of discovering anything with late Archdeacon of Colchester, and high canon of
regard to him, it may be as well to confess our ig- St. Stephen at Westminster; which full craftily
norance once for all. hath made it, in ballad royal for the erudition of
Perhaps we ought to notice the opinion enter- my Lord Bousher, son and heir at that time to my
tained by several persons, that Cato is not intended lord the Earl of Essex." The Cato we have been
to represent the name of the author, but is merely discussing is frequently termed by the first English
to be regarded as the significant title of the work, printers Cato Magnus, in contradistinction to Cato
just as we have the Brutus, and the Laelius, and Parvus, which was a sort of supplement to the forthe Cato Major of Cicero, and the treatise men- mer, composed originally by Daniel Church (Eccletioned by Aulus Gellius, called Cato, aut de Liberis siensis), a domestic in the court of Henry the Seeducandis. cond, about 1180, and also translated by Burgh.
Lastly, it has been inferred, from the introduc- The two tracts were very frequently bound up totion to book second, in which mention is made of gether. (See Ames, Typographical Antiquities, vol.
Virgil and Lucan, that we have here certain proof i. pp. 195-202; Warton's History of English
that the distichs belong to some period later than Poetry, vol. ii. section 27.) [W. R.]
the reign of Nero; but even this is by no means CATO, PO'RCIUS. Cato was the name of a
clear, for all the prologues have the air of forgeries; family of the plebeian Porcia gens, and was first
and the one in question, above all, in addition to a given to M. Cato, the censor. [See below, No. 1.1
STEMMA CATONUM.
1. M. Porcius Cato Censorius, Cos. B. c. 195, Cens... 1c. 84,
married 1. Licinia. 2. Salonia.
FI
2. M. Porcius Cato Licinianus, Pr. design. B. c. 3. M. Porcius Cato Salonianus,
152, married Aemilia. Pr.
a b