Inured from boyhood to hard toil and simple fare on his father’s Sabine farm, Cato took an active part in the war against Hannibal, returning after the conflict to his humble rustic life. But his country soon demanded his services in another field; at her bar he won even greater glory, and she rewarded him with every office in her gift. Cato nobly discharged his various trusts; but it is as the uncompromising foe of effeminacy and vice that we know him best. His political life, a model of economy and uprightness, was a ceaseless battle with corruption—a struggle to banish the luxury he despised and restore the stern virtue of his fathers. But it was one man against a nation, and the current was too strong for one alone to stem. He served Rome to the bitter end, and fell in the traces at the age of ninety, his energies unimpaired, his purpose unshaken.
Amid all his active duties, Cato, whose constitution like his will was of iron, found time for literary work. He is known to have written at least one hundred and fifty orations, not without faults of style, for the amenities he was too apt to disregard, but cogent in their reasoning, clear and powerful in expression. Extensive remains of his practical hand-book “on Agriculture” are extant, which show him to have been familiar with all the details of the farm and garden. In a work on medicine, dedicated to his son, he exclaims against the Greek physicians, and recommends the simple remedies which he had always found efficacious. His prejudice against medical men was founded on the belief that their introduction from Greece was a deep-laid plot to poison his fellow-citizens; moreover, he knew that Rome had thriven marvellously for five centuries, in blissful ignorance of the medical faculty.
Cato’s chief work was his “Origines” (in seven books), a history of his country, deriving its name from the first three books, which discussed the origin of Rome and the Italian states. The aged patriot prepared this treatise just before his death, to throw it into the scale against Greek influence; but not a hundred Catos could have turned the balance then. The loss of the “Origines” is an irreparable one to archæology.
SPECIMENS OF CATO’S STYLE.
“For myself, I think well of a merchant as a man of energy and studious of gain; but it is a career that leads to danger and ruin. Farming, however, makes the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers; and of all sources of gain is the surest, the most natural, and the least invidious. Those who are busy with it have the fewest bad thoughts.”—Treatise on Agriculture.
“Buy not what you want, but what you must have; what you don’t want is dear at a farthing.”—“Men are worn out by hard work; but if they do no work, rest and sloth injure them more than exercise.”
HEROISM OF CÆDICIUS.
During the First Punic War the Roman army was surprised and threatened with destruction, when Cædicius the Tribune promptly volunteered to engage the enemy with 400 men, while the rest escaped. The little band was cut down to a man.
“The immortal gods,” said Cato, “granted the tribune a lot according to his valor. For thus it came to pass. Though he had received many wounds, none proved mortal; and when his comrades recognized him among the dead, faint from loss of blood, they took him up and he recovered. But it makes a vast difference in what country a generous action is performed. Leonidas of Lacedæmon, who performed a similar exploit at Thermopylæ, is praised. On account of his valor, united Greece testified her gratitude in every possible way, and adorned his exploit with monumental records, pictures, statues, eulogies, histories. The Roman tribune gained but faint praise, and yet he had done the same and saved the republic.”—Origines.
Lælius and Scipio followed Cato, and improved upon his rude eloquence. Their speeches, which were committed to writing, bore the impress of learning and genius.