About the Author

Fred K. Drogula is the Charles J. Ping Professor of Humanities and Professor of Classics at Ohio University.

Reviews

This is a highly readable book based on immense scholarship, which will appeal to scholars and also to general readers. It not only illuminates Cato's personality and career, but sheds light on the complexity of the late Republic's institutions and why they were unable to endure the onslaught of ambitious politicians and generals.
*CHOICE*

a caustic and decidedly modern rejoinder to Plutarch's martyr.
*Brendan Boyle, Wall Street Journal*

An excellent work of scholarship that will be of much use to scholars and students.... Well written and engaging to read.
*Classical Journal-Online*

This is one of the most fascinating but also most complicated stretches of Roman history, and Drogula's highly readable account, with its admirably clear explanations especially of the chaotic events of the 50's, can serve as a helpful introduction to the period even for those not primarily interested in the author's protagonist.
*Katharina Volk, Classical World*

Drogula has produced a welcome addition to scholarship on the late Roman republic: the first full scholarly biography of Cato the Younger in English. As Drogula's book shows, Cato warrants a biography alongside those of more famous contemporaries thanks to his influence on events of the last two decades of the republic, despite never reaching the consulship or celebrating a triumph.... Drogula's thorough survey offers much of value for anyone interested in Cato or late republican politics.
*Bryn Mawr Classical Review*

This is the alarming story of how one infuriating, rude, intractable man-admired by many, thought mad by more-could, nearly singlehandedly, bring down a free republic that for nearly half a millennium had overcome all perils from within and without. An appallingly timely book, and not for the timid reader.
*Jon E. Lendon, University of Virginia*

Cato comes to us mostly by way of idealizing or caricature. Drogula, in this vividly written and wellinformed biography, aims at recovering the fleshandbone Cato and his complicated personality. Here was a man who, as Drogula shows us, looked to the past in fashioning his deeply influential reputation for traditional virtue and yet was instrumental in the events which led to the collapse of the Republic, whose values he claimed to embody. His story is anything but simple, and Drogula tells it well.
*W. Jeffrey Tatum, Victoria University of Wellington*