Not by acts only, but by constant speeches, full at once of grimness and humor, did Cato struggle against the degeneracy of his time[[45]]. He concluded his period of office with a self-laudatory harangue, and assumed the title Censorius, while his statue was placed in the temple of the goddess Salus with an inscription affirming that he had reformed the Roman nation.
But in a very brief time all trace of Cato's activity as censor was swept away, except that afforded by the numerous life-long quarrels in which he had involved himself[[46]]. In less than two years one of his victims, Purpurio, was employed by the senate on a high political mission, while another, L. Flamininus, sat among the senators at the games in defiance of Cato's sentence. Yet Cato remained by far the most powerful member of the senate. Titus Flamininus, his only important rival, quickly passed out of notice. So far as there was any democratic opposition to the senatorial oligarchy, Cato was the leader of that opposition for the remainder of his life. But at that period no great political movements agitated the state within; nearly the whole interest of the time was centred in the foreign relations of Rome. On matters of foreign policy Cato offered but little opposition to the prevailing tendencies of the age, though on particular occasions he exercised great influence. But his voice was at all times loudly heard on all questions of morality and public order. He supported the lex Furia and the lex Voconia, the object of which was to prevent the dissipation of family property, and the lex Orchia, directed against extravagant expenditure
on feasts, also the lex Baebia de ambitu, the first serious attempt to check bribery. We hear also that Cato bitterly attacked Lepidus, censor in 180, for erecting a permanent theatre in place of the movable booths before used. The building was actually pulled down. We are told that from time to time he denounced the misdoings of provincial governors. In 171 he was one of a commission of five for bringing to justice three ex-praetors who had practised all manner of corruption in Spain. Almost the last act of his life was to prosecute Galba for cruel misgovernment of the Lusitanians. The titles of Cato's speeches show that he played a great part in the deliberations of the senate concerning foreign affairs, but as his fighting days were over and he was unfitted for diplomacy, we have little explicit evidence of his activity in this direction. At the end of the third Macedonian war he successfully opposed the annexation of Macedonia. He also saved from destruction the Rhodians, who during the war had plainly desired the victory of Perseus, and in the early days, when the Roman commanders had ill success, had deeply wounded the whole Roman nation by an offer to mediate between them and the king of Macedon.
Cato had all his life retained his feeling of enmity to the Carthaginians, whom Scipio, he thought, had treated too tenderly. In 150 he was one of an embassy sent to Carthage, and came back filled with alarm at the prosperity of the city. It is said that whatever was the subject on which he was asked for his opinion in the senate, he always ended his speech with 'ceterum censeo delendam esse Carthaginem' P. Scipio Nasica, the son-in-law of Africanus, and the representative of his policy, always shouted out the opposite opinion, thinking that the fear of Carthage had a salutary effect on the Roman populace at large. But the ideas of Cato prevailed, and a cruel policy, carried out with needless brutality, led to the extinction of Rome's greatest rival. Cato did not live to see the conclusion of the war; he died in 149, at the age of 84 or 85 years, having retained his mental and physical vigor to the last. He had two sons, one by his first wife, and one by his second wife, born when Cato was 80
years of age. The elder son, to whom many of Cato's works were addressed, died as praetor-elect, before his father[[47]]. The other was grandfather of Cato Uticensis.
The literary activity of the old censor was great, though his leisure was small.[[48]] In Cicero's time a collection of 150 speeches was still extant. The titles of about 90 are still known to us, and of some we possess a few fragments. Cato's greatest work, however, was his Origines, the first real historical work written in Latin. His predecessors had been merely compilers of chronicles. The work was founded on laborious investigations, and comprised the history of Rome from the earliest times perhaps down to 150 B.C.[[49]], as well as notices of the history of other important Italian states. Further, Cato wrote of Agriculture, to which he was enthusiastically devoted. We still have his De Re Rustica, a collection of maxims loosely strung together. He also composed works on law; a sort of educational encyclopaedia for his son; and a collection of witty sayings, Αποφθεγματα, drawn from Greek as well as from Roman sources.
Plutarch seems to have known a collected edition of the pungent and proverbial utterances for which the censor was famous, and for which (not for any knowledge of philosophy[[50]]) he received the title of sapiens ('shrewd') which he bore at the end of his life. This edition, however, was not compiled by Cato himself.
In view of Cicero's treatise, the Cato Maior, it is necessary to say something of Cato's relations with the Greeks and Greek literature. The ancients give us merely vague statements that he only began to learn Greek 'in his old age.' The expression must be liberally interpreted if, as seems clear, the whole of his writings showed the influence of Greek literature. It is certain, however, that he thoroughly detested the Greek nation. This hatred was shown in acts more than once. No doubt Cato was
at least a consenting party to the expulsion from Rome of Greek teachers in 161 B.C. When in 155 the famous embassy came from Athens consisting of Carneades the Academic, Critolaus the Peripatetic and Diogenes the Stoic, Cato was a prime mover of the decree by which they were removed from the city. Socrates was one of Cato's favorite marks for jests. And this is the man into whose mouth Cicero puts the utterances, but slightly veiled, of Greek wisdom!
(2.) Scipio. P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the younger, was no blood relation of the conqueror of Hannibal, but the adopted son of his son. It must be remembered, however, that adoption was much more formal and binding, and produced much closer ties in ancient than in modern times.[[51]] The elder Africanus was unfortunate in his sons. The younger of these attained to the praetorship in 174, but was immediately driven from the senate by the censors of that year on account of his disreputable life. The elder was an invalid, who never held any office except that of augur, and died at an early age. He adopted the son of L. Aemilius Paulus, the victor of Pydna; the adopted son bore the name Aemilianus in memory of his origin. Cato's son married a daughter of Paulus, so that the censor was brought into relationship with the Cornelii, whose most illustrious representative he had hated and attacked.