Cato the Censor

The Cato whose de agri cultura we are reading was named Marcus Porcius Cato.
He lived from 234 to 149.
He is, by the way, the one who kept saying Cathago delenda est.
He was a plebeian from Tusculum.
Fought against Hannibal. Military tribune in Sicily 214.
204 quaestor (went with Scipio to Africa and Sicily).
199 plebeian aedile.
198 praetor governing Sardinia.
195 consul with Valerius Flaccus. Homo novus.
After consulship, his province was Spain.
191 military tribune in Greece.
from 190 on, he prosecuted cases against a faction of the Scipios.
184 CENSOR-hence "Cato the Censor"-he favored strict virtues, no luxury, and a powerful state. He gained fame as a real stickler as censor.
More trials, enhancing reputation as well as enmities.
155-spoke against the "Philosophers' embassy" to Rome (Carneades was one of the philosophers and suggested that Rome's dominance was due to violence) and had them thrown out.
153 visited Carthage and decided it had to be destroyed.

Leitmotif: opposition to luxury.


Cato was THE champion of Rome's ancestral values, and became a symbol of the mos maiorum. He is known as an anti-hellenist who held that Greek culture corrupted, particularly Greek intellectual culture with its individualistic bent. In fact, however, Cato was an eclectic: he wanted to pick and choose amongst the various things Greece had to offer. He did not like the luxury and sophistic ethical theories (relativism, euhemerism, antilogies) of Greece in particular.
Favoring a powerful state, Cato was worried by the appearance of powerful individuals. He favored an aristocratic rule in which the aristocracy ruled without having principes with extraordinary power amongst them. In his history, he did not even give the names of of individual commanders, which reflects his idea that the individual should be subordinate to the state. He also tried to reduce the influence of the gentes. He favored the theory of Roman history that Rome grew by institutions gradually and that that growth was due to the combined action of the populus with the aristocracy.
The de agri cultura, which we are reading, does not have much editorializing in it, but it is clear that Cato was offering to the senatorial class a handbook on how to make money in agriculture. Ties to the land are a strong theme in the Roman aristocrat's self-conception, and as such are a major part of the mos maiorum. Slaves and large farms were the idea. Virtues of a farmer are parsimonia, duritia, industria. This is not pastoral pleasantry: this is how to get profit from a farm.

WORKS:
Cicero indicates that Cato made at least 150 speeches. We have about 80 titles and a few fragments .
Origines history: we have fragments. It had 3 books about the origins of Rome, then it turned to the Punic wars and became a history of contemporary times with some self-celebratory tendencies. He shows an ethnographic interest.
de agri cultura the first complete prose work in Latin we possess. It is archaizing rather than archaic. Homoioteleuton, alliteration, repetition.
Carmen de moribus: lost.
Apophthegmata sayings: preserved

Much of the material in these notes was gleaned from Gian Biagio Conte's Latin Literature, and probably reflects his wording in places. I highly recommend Conte's book.