Context: Marcius Porcius Cato (95–46 B.C.) is the hero of Addison's play. Having fought long against Caesar's despotism and espoused the cause of republicanism, Cato is saddened and defeated by the course of events. He has even lost one of his sons in the struggle. He advises Portius, his remaining son, to retire from public life to the Sabine hills, there to live on the land where their great ancestor, Cato the Censor, the present Cato's great-grandfather, had lived. At the beginning of the fifth act of the play Cato is found sitting by a table on which lie a sword and what Addison calls "Plato's Book on the Immortality of the Soul," probably the Phaedo. Cato considers what death may bring if he commits suicide, as he later does. He notes that man longs after immortality and shrinks from believing that death is but oblivion. And he asks why man fears death so greatly.