HST130SP4 The Fall of the Roman Republic 1000words Paper - Essay Example

269). Although these two statesmen were born in different eras and had different family backgrounds, both had marked similarities of thoughts and values aside from being novus homo or “new man”, along with Cicero. A novus homo is a Roman who got elected to the position of consul, the highest elected position in Rome then, even without having ascendants who were themselves consuls (Mellor 1999 p 40). One similar trait between Cato and Marius was their anti-Hellenistic attitudes. To Cato the Greeks personify material indulgence which was abhorrent to most Roman aristocrats.

Cato who also held the position of a censura, the highest Roman magistrate, spoke against Romans who took to wearing Greek dresses, visited the gymnasium and imitated the hedonistic way of Greek lifestyle. Similarly, Marius looked down on Greeks as militarily inferior and refused to learn the Greek literature on the ground that it was ridiculous to learn from teachers who were subjugated by another people (Isaac 2006 pp 387-388). In addition, both men were ambitious although Marius was a little bit overambitious, as can be gleaned from the way they lived their lives, running for the consulship position after serving in wars, with Marius having been elected for seven times.

Both are driven men: Cato in accumulating riches through accumulation of agricultural estates, and; Marius for glory in warfare and politics (Humphrey 2006 pp 137-138; Boatwright, et al 2004 p172). In addition, the fact that both men were able to have themselves voted to the highest elected position, the first in their families, attest to their ambitious nature. Statesmen who rose to prominence on their own without the backing of ancestral nobility are examples of “the ideology of novitas,” a principle espoused by the likes of Cato, Marius and Cicero.

The ideology put emphasis on personal valor rather than on the standard Roman aristocratic principle of ancestral right. Romans that