[In the following excerpt, Hadas stresses the importance of Cato's contribution to Roman historiography. In his discussion of Cato's career, however, Hadas attributes "more than a touch of demagoguery " to the orator's political and literary style.]

In history as well as oratory Cato is a pioneer. Various priestly and other chronicles must have been kept from the earliest organization of the state, but it was only when Rome entered the main stream of Mediterranean history in the Second Punic War that awareness of self and of other peoples provided impulse to historiography of the Greek type. It was natural, in the absence of Latin models and with knowledge of Greek general in the selected audience whom the aristocratic early historians addressed, that the first works of this category should be written in Greek. But the nationalist note which characterizes all Roman historiography and constitutes its principal divergence from the Greek becomes apparent at once. Indeed, a collateral motive for the use of Greek was probably a desire to impress upon Greek readers the high dignity of the Roman state and the irresistible prowess of Roman arms. So Fabius Pictor, the earliest literary historian of Rome, is criticized by Polybius for his Roman bias, though Polybius respects him sufficiently to use him. He is also cited with respect by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Fabius fought in the Second Punic War, and was a member of the embassy to Delphi after the disaster at Cannae. It was not only Rome that Fabius favored, but his own senatorial class, and the same was doubtless true of the other senatorial writers of Roman history in Greek—L. Cincius Alimentus, P. Cornelius Scipio, A. Postumius Albinus, and C. Acilius. Cincius Alimentus also fought in the Second Punic War, and was captured by Hannibal in Sicily in 209 B.C. Scipio was the elder son of Scipio Africanus and adoptive father of the Africanus who destroyed Carthage. Postumius Albinus was consul in 151 B.C. Polybius and Cicero speak well of him, but Cato ridiculed his modest deprecation of his inadequate Greek: apology for awkward use of a language not one's own, said Cato, (Gellius 11.8.2), is appropriate only if a man had been compelled by the Amphictyons to write in that language. C. Acilius was interpreter for the three Greek philosophers who came to Rome as ambassadors in 155 B.C. Both his Roman and his senatorial bias are seen in the anecdote reported from him in Livy 35.14.5. In conversation with his conqueror Scipio, Hannibal rated the three greatest generals of the world, in order, as Alexander, Pyrrhus, and himself. When Scipio asked what Hannibal would have said if he had beaten him, Hannibal replied that he would then have put himself ahead of both Alexander and Pyrrhus. The reaction against these noble writers of Greek, and against the rising tide of Hellenism in general, was led by Cato, who is our earliest writer of Latin prose.

Marcus Porcius Cato, called "the Elder" or "the Censor" to distinguish him from his great-grandson Marcus Porcius Cato "of Utica," was born of an old plebeian family at Tusculum, about ten miles from Rome, in 234 B.C. He too fought in the Second Punic War, and thereafter in Thrace, in Greece, and in Spain. He was quaestor in Sicily and Africa in 204, aedile in 199, praetor in Sardinia in 198, consul in 195, and censor in 184. His strictness in the latter office gives "censorious" its connotation. In politics he was the leader of the opposition to the aristocratic group headed by the Scipios, and he defended his nationalist and "popular" position with ruthlessness, scathing wit, constant glorification of ancient Roman austerity and dignity, no little personal pride, and a measure of theatricality. A decree ordering the expulsion of Greek philosophers and rhetoricians from Rome in 161 B.C. testifies to the political strength of Cato's party. When, in 155 B.C., the Greeks sent to the senate an embassy composed of Carneades the Academic, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic, it was Cato who insisted that their business be dispatched at once, so that they should not linger in Rome to corrupt the youth. He insisted that Greek physicians were in a conspiracy to kill their Roman patients. When the question of releasing the thousand Achaean hostages (of whom Polybius was one) was brought up, Cato said it little suited the senate's dignity to debate whether Greek or Roman undertakers should bury the derelicts. He struck a senator from the roll for kissing his wife in broad daylight, and he left behind the horse that had carried him through his campaign in Spain because he refused to put Rome to the charge of transporting the animal. After a mission to Carthage in 157 he concluded his every speech in the senate, regardless of the occasion, with delenda est Carthago. When he died in 149 B.C. he was already a legend.

Actually the conflict between Cato and his noble adversaries was not a struggle between liberal and conservative views, but rather a rivalry within conservative ranks, with rather more enlightenment on the side of the nobles. For all their philhellenism Scipio's friends too cherished Roman values, and they too were concerned over moral deterioration. Cato's assumed monopoly of morality, like his scorn of Hellenism, had more than a touch of demagoguery. But his eminent merits and his striking personality made him, in succeeding generations, the Jefferson or Jackson or Lincoln of his party. Pamphlets doubtless embellished his known proclivities to make political capital. Hence, though we have Lives of Cato by Nepos and Plutarch, as well as the Cato Maior of Cicero and numerous other characterizations, the total picture which emerges is something of a caricature. He cannot have been ignorant of Greek until he was an octogenarian, for we know that he negotiated with Greeks in his prime. Whether his hatred of Greek was genuine or a sham, Cato's sponsorship of Ennius, who did more than any other man to introduce Hellenism to Latin literature, is a wry joke on the leading opponent of Hellenism in Rome.

In any case it was not education that Cato opposed, but Greek education, and to supply the place of Greek treatises he wrote practical handbooks on all the subjects of the curriculum except philosophy. We know that he dealt with medicine, rhetoric, and agriculture, and it seems likely that he included military science and law also. Apparently these works were combined into a kind of encyclopedia, entitled Ad fllium. When his son was still a child he wrote for him a history of Rome "in large letters" with his own hand, and when the boy grew older he dedicated to him these various treatises. All were imbued with Roman ideals and traditions; the fragments reveal an oracular manner. An orator is vir bonus dicendi peritus, "a good man skilled in speech"; and in rhetoric the main principle is Rem tene, verba sequentur, "Hold fast to the matter, the words will come." Gellius (11.2) also ascribes to Cato a Carmen de moribus, from which he cites characteristic moralizing saws, but in prose.

Besides the encyclopedia for his son Cato also wrote independent treatises on various subjects. The surviving De agricultura or De re rustica is the oldest extant prose work in Latin; the language of his treatise underwent modernization in antiquity, but the tone remains authentically archaic. Beginning with a statement of the advantages of agriculture over commerce and banking, Cato proceeds to describe the best location for a farm, the duties of the owner and of his steward, and various principles of farm management. Interspersed with instructions on farm economy are prescriptions for medicaments, recipes for cooking, religious formulae, and other matters. The disorder of the book is further confused by interpolations and repetitions. Throughout the tone is a hard and cheerless drive for profit; there is nothing about the compensations of the rural life, nothing of the joys of living and cooperating with nature, or of sentimental attachment between master and slaves and livestock. "Sell worn-out oxen, blemished cattle, blemished sheep, wool, hides, an old wagon, old tools, an old slave, a sickly slave, and whatever else is superfluous. The master should have the selling habit, not the buying habit" (2.7). "The overseer must lend to no one seed grain, fodder, spelt, wine, or oil. He must have two or three households, no more, from whom he borrows and to whom he lends" (5.3). "When you issue the tunic or blanket [every second year] first take up the old one and have patchwork made of it" (59). We are told where equipment of various sorts may be bought, and the proper prices: "Lucius Tunnius of Casinum and Gaius Mennius, son of Lucius Mennius of Venafrum, make the best press ropes" (135.3). The recipes seem generous enough; the veterinary medicine has a strong admixture of superstition. "Both the sick ox and he who administers the [prescribed] medicine must stand, and both be fasting" (71). For mending a dislocated limb the split reeds to serve as splints must be joined to the accompaniment of a chant: Motas uaeta daries dardares astataries dissunapiter; and after they are applied the officiant must duly pronounce the charm: Huat haut haut istasis tarsis ordannabou dannaustra (160).

But the proper vehicle for communicating the gospel of Rome was history; and the fact that Roman history had already been written by senatorial historians and in Greek made it inevitable that Cato should turn his hand to the history. Nepos (Cato 3.3) tells us:

When he was an old man Cato began to write history, of which he left seven books. The first contains an account of the kings of the Roman people; the second and the third, the origin of all the states of Italy—and this seems the reason he called the whole Origines. Then in the fourth book we have the first Punic war, and in the fifth the second. All this is told in summary fashion, and he treated the other wars in the same manner down to the praetorship of Servius Galba, who plundered the Lusitanians. In his account of all these wars he did not name the leaders, but related the events without mentioning names. In the same work he gave an account of the noteworthy occurrences and sights in Italy and the Spains; and in it he showed great industry and carefulness, but no learning.

—J. C. Rolfe

The latter four books seem to have been joined on to the first three after Cato's death and the title Origines then applied to the whole.

But it was in his speeches that Cato gave fullest expression to his national Roman program and most effectively influenced the course of Roman literature. He spoke his mind vigorously on every political issue, and participated in numerous judicial trials; Cicero (Brutus 17.65) knew a hundred and fifty speeches of Cato, and the titles of some eighty have come down. Ancient critics find fault with his roughness, but all admit his torrential vigor. Many terse apophthegms drawn from his speeches testify to his scathing wit and his gift for epigram. One specimen must suffice: "Thieves who steal from individuals spend their lives in prison and chains; thieves who steal from the commonweal, in purple and gold." Cicero and Plutarch refer to Cato's letters to his son Marcus; perhaps letters addressed to others were also collected. Ennius had pioneered in various forms of verse and endowed each with a distinctive Roman color; Cato pioneered in various forms of prose, and his Roman coloring was much more vivid. In subsequent Latin prose the Roman note regularly rings clearer than in poetry.