Cato the Younger (95-46 B.C.) was a Roman statesman and Governor of Utica, near Carthage. He attempted suicide on learning that the Pompeian cause in the civil war was lost (Plutarch 36:70). Giordano's first treatment of the subject, in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Le Havre (Ferrarri and Scavizzi, op. cit., p. 256, no. A33, illustrated p. 477, no. 100), was painted in the early 1650s, and shows Cato plunging a sword into his torso. The present picture, painted circa 1660, depicts the second episode of his self-destruction, where he re-opens his previous wound.