The Estimation of the Noble Romans in Divers Ages

The Estimation of the Noble Romans in Divers Ages

THE AGES AND THE MEN	CATO THE YOUNGER 95-46 B.C.	JULIUS CAESAR 100-44 B.C.	M.T. CICERO 106-43 B.C.	MARCUS BRUTUS 85-42 B.C.	MARC ANTONY 83-30 B.C.
Classical Age Our representative writer is Plutarch	High regard for a man who was better than the times in which he lived.	A life destined for great things.	A learned man and a lover of his country.	Praised for purity of motive in the assassination of Caesar.	A cautionary tale of a life gone bad.
The Christian Middle Ages Our representative writer is Dante	As Cato was the defender of the Roman Republic, likewise, Cato, in Dante's Comedia, is portrayed as the guardian of the seaward approach to the island of Purgatory.	Held up as laudable example of swift action, and his faults are downplayed.	A virtuous pagan and a guide to Christians.	Dante places Brutus in Judecca, in the Ninth, or lowest, Circle of Hell, as a betrayer of his benefactor.	Dante doesn't mention Antony, but he does treat the story of Antony and Cleopatra as that of a sinner made less sinful by the love that motived the sin.
Rennaisance Our representative writer is Shakespeare	Cato is already dead when the action begins in the play Julius Caesar, but his noble spirit lives in Porcia.	He towers above his contemporaries and even in death is a major force.	Shakespeare, who otherwise gives us stellar examples of oratory, such as Marc Antony's funeral oration, gives but few and unimportant lines to Cicero, the greatest orator of ancient Rome.	The noblest Roman of them all.	In Julius Caesar we see Antony as loyal to Caesar whose murder he avenges. In Anthony and Cleopatra Shakespeare makes Anthony the romantic leading man of the love story.