Cato

Marcus Cato, sprung from the municipal town of Tusculum, in his early youth, before he gave himself to public honours, lived in the Sabine country, because there he had an inherited estate left him by his father. From there, at the urging of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, whom he had as colleague in the consulship and censorship, as Marcus Perpenna, the ex-censor, used to relate, he removed to Rome and began to appear in the Forum. His first campaign he served at seventeen years of age. In the consulship of Quintus Fabius and Marcus Claudius he was a military tribune in Sicily. Returning from there, he followed the camp of Gaius Claudius Nero, and his service was greatly esteemed in the battle near Sena, in which Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, fell. As quaestor he was allotted to Publius Africanus, the consul, with whom he did not live in accordance with the tie of their allotment: for from him he differed throughout his whole life. He was made plebeian aedile with Gaius Helvius. As praetor he held the province of Sardinia, from which, an earlier time, as quaestor on his way back from Africa, he had brought the poet Quintus Ennius — which we esteem no less than any of the most magnificent Sardinian triumphs.

He held the consulship with Lucius Valerius Flaccus. Having obtained by lot the province of Hither Spain, he brought a triumph from it. While he was lingering there too long, Publius Scipio Africanus, consul for the second time — in whose former consulship he had been quaestor — wished to remove him from the province and himself succeed him; and he could not bring this about through the senate, although Scipio held the leading place in the state, because then the commonwealth was administered not by power but by law. Angered by this, after his consulship was completed, Scipio remained as a private man in the city. But Cato, made censor with the same Flaccus, exercised that power with severity. For he both took action against several nobles and added many new clauses to his edict, by which luxury might be checked, which even then was beginning to sprout. For about eighty years, from his youth to the very end of his life, he did not cease to take up enmities for the sake of the commonwealth. Assailed by many, he not only suffered no loss of repute, but, as long as he lived, grew in the praise of his virtues.

In all things he was of singular industry: for he was both a skilful farmer and an experienced jurisconsult, and a great commander and a passable orator and most eager for letters. The study of these, although he had taken it up rather late in life, yet he made such progress in it that it cannot easily be found, whether of Greek or of Italian affairs, what was unknown to him. From his youth he composed orations. As an old man he set about writing histories. Of these there are seven books. The first contains the deeds of the kings of the Roman people; the second and third, whence each Italian state arose, for which reason he seems to have called the whole work the Origines. In the fourth, moreover, is the first Punic War, in the fifth the second. And all these are told summarily. The remaining wars he likewise pursued in the same manner, down to the praetorship of Servius Galba, who plundered the Lusitanians: and the leaders of these wars he did not name, but recorded the events without names. In the same works he set forth what in Italy and the Spains either was done or seemed marvellous: in which much industry and diligence appears, but no learning. Of his life and character we have treated more fully in that book which we composed separately about him at the request of Titus Pomponius Atticus. Wherefore we refer those who are eager for Cato to that volume.