The incident of the reading of the Dialogue,
and the reflections which it suggested, have been used by Addison in
his frigid and bombastic tragedy of Cato.]
[Footnote 754: Kaltwasser quotes a note of Dacier who cannot conceive
how Cato could read so long a Dialogue through twice in so short a
time. It is equally a matter of wonder how any body could know that he
read it through once. The fact that he had the book and was reading it
is all that could be known. Another difficulty that is suggested by
Dacier is, that the Dialogue contains the strongest arguments against
suicide; but perhaps this difficulty is removed by the suggestion that
in one passage it is said that a man should not kill himself till the
deity has 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.
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