According to Cato the Elder
Submitted by A.I. Watcher on March 2 2002 15:42:22
In reply to Thanks for this informative post submitted by 194 on March 2 2002 15:14:03
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Cato was a senator and an author. He was regarded as somewhat old fashioned but "virtuous." He wrote a several volumes about life in late Republican Rome, mostly in the form of exhortations in how to live a reproach-free life. He dealt with all manners of day to day living, from the appropriate time for a gentleman farmer to plant his wheat, to proper comportment at the baths, to the treatment of slaves. He wrote about the need to treat slaves well and to avoid the excesses allowed at law. He didn't mind the ocassional lashing if a slave were truly incorrigable but he had very harsh words for the man who found it necessary to beat or whip a slave. He found crucifixion to be the mark of abject failure as a property owner. He also wrote about the sexual practices and seemed to take it for granted that men of his generation and older found any male/male sex to be degrading. While he never discussed sex with male slaves, he did have harsh words for men who indulged in sexual relations with female slaves. Cato was not entirely typical and his peers regarded him as a person whose morals came from an earlier time. Yet even his grandson, Cato the Younger, felt it appopriate to emulate the values of his elder. The Boni - a conservative political faction - often praised the younger Cato for his incorruptable virtue. So it seems that the stricter morality of an earlier age had not entirely gone out of fashion by the time of Caesar. |
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