Cato, Marcus Porcius (234-149 BC)

Roman politician. Having significantly developed Roman rule in Spain, Cato was appointed censor in 184 BC. He acted severely, taxing luxuries and heavily revising the senatorial and equestrian lists. He was violently opposed to Greek influence on Roman culture and his suspicion of the re-emergence of Carthaginian power led him to remark: ‘Carthage must be destroyed.’

Cato was born in the Latin city of Tusculum, about 24 km/15 mi southeast of Rome. He was brought up, like his plebeian forefathers, as a farmer; but through the patronage of the patrician L Valerius Flaccus he became successively quaestor 204, aedile 199, praetor 198, and consul 195. Between 217 and 191 BC he served in the second Punic War, then in Spain, and finally in the campaigns against the Seleucid king Antiochus III of Syria. His subjection of the Celtiberians in Spain 194 earned him a triumph (victory procession).

Cato was largely responsible for the prosecution of the Scipios for corruption during the Carthaginian war and he had often reproached Scipio Africanus for his luxury. Both the orator Cicero and the historian Livy cite Cato as the model of a Roman citizen in the heyday of the Roman Republic. Cato's very valuable treatise on agriculture, De Re Rustica, is extant but his principal work, Origines, a comprehensive history of Rome, has survived only in meagre fragments.