influence he could bring to bear on Antonius in order to secure Cicero's
safety; hence Cicero's care to avoid in the dedication all but the vaguest
possible allusions to politics. Had that introduction been written before
Caesar's death, we should have had plain allusions (as in the prooemia of
the _Academica_, the _De Finibus_, the _Tusculan Disputations_, and the _De
Natura Deorum_) to Caesar's dictatorship.[12]

The time was one of desperate gloom for Cicero. The downfall of the old
constitution had overwhelmed him with sorrow, and his brief outburst of joy
over Caesar's death had been quickly succeeded by disgust and alarm at the
proceedings of Antonius. The deep wound caused by his daughter's death[13]
was still unhealed. It is easy to catch in the Cato Maior some echoes of
his grief for her. When it is said that of all Cato's titles to admiration
none is higher than the fortitude he showed in bearing the death of his
son,[14] the writer is thinking of the struggle he himself had been waging
against a like sorrow for more than a year past; and when Cato expresses
his firm conviction that he will meet his child beyond the grave,[15] we
can see Cicero's own yearning for reunion with his deeply loved Tullia.

2. _Greek Sources._

All Cicero's philosophical and rhetorical writings were confessedly founded
more or less on Greek originals.[16] The stores from which he principally
drew in writing the Cato Maior are clearly indicated in several parts of
the work. Passages from Xenophon's _Oeconomicus_ are translated in Chapters
17 and 22. In Chapters 2 and 3 there is a close imitation of the
conversation between Socrates and Cephalus at the beginning of Plato's
_Republic_, while in Chapter 21 is reproduced one of the most striking
portions of the _Phaedo_, 72 E-73 B, 78-80.[17] The view of the divine
origin and destiny of the human soul contained in the passage from the