The more things change,.......................Part 1

      Cato's world was the Roman Republic, a state at the apex of its power, able to make foreign kings tremble with a single decree, and rotting from the inside out.  Cato's arena was the Senate, an awesome assemblage of gray-haired eminences, the symbol of Rome's republican heritage, and a body crippled by personality politics, rigged elections, ritualized bribery, and sex scandals.  Public life in the late Republic resemble a soap opera, and if we didn't find in that fact a sharp enough reflection of our own time, we could surely find familiarity in the grave challenges that threatened Rome and its Senate.   They included homegrown terrorism, a debt crisis, the management of multiple foreign wars, the fraying of conventional societal bonds and mores, and a yawning gap between rich and poor.

-Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni, Rome's Last Citizen:  The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar