The life and work of Cato

Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) was also known as Cato the Elder. His youth was spent on his father's farm near Reate. Here he acquired those qualities of simplicity, frugality, strict honesty, austerity and patriotism. His native ability and shrewdness, says Plutarch, gave him the surname Cato (shrewdness). Political offices came to him in due succession, a quaestorship in Sicily and Africa in 204, an aedileship in 199, a praetorship in Sardinia, the consulship in Spain and the censorship in 184. His innumerable speeches, political and judicial, delivered before the Roman senate or popular assembly, were marked by eloquence, earnestness, and pungent wit, not without vainglory and narrowness of view. Always the champion of the common people, he stood out as the relentless foe of aristocratic factions. The vigor and severity with which he applied himself to the duties of the censorship, with his strict revision of senatorial lists, gained for him the surname Censorius. From Marcus Porcius Cato on Agriculture translated by William Davis Hooper Fletcher and Sons, Ltd. 1934