Cato's daughter Porcia has herself a really good cry

Abstract

The lamentations that the sisters and the wife of Cato had performed in mourning for him are symmetrical, in their dramatic force, to the lamentations that could have been performed by Porcia, daughter of Cato, for her husband Brutus. I cite here a most revealing passage I found in Plutarch’s Life of Brutus, along with my own translation from the original Greek. We see here the figure of Porcia expressing her intense feelings of foreboding as she contemplates the doom that awaits her husband at the Battle of Philippi. Instead of lamenting here, over and over again, Porcia reverts—over and over again—to a timeless picture of such lamentation, as performed by Andromache in her feelings of foreboding over the impending doom of her husband Hector.