Marcus Porcius Cato (Latin: M·PORCIVS·M·F·CATO) (234 BC - 149 BC), Roman statesman, surnamed "The Censor," Sapiens, Priscus, or even Major (a Elder), to distinguish him from either Cato the Younger (his great-grandson), was innate at Tusculum.

He come of an ancient plebeian family, noted for some armed services services, but not ennobled per discharge of the higher civil agents. He was bred, fallowing a manner of his Latin forefathers, to agriculture, to which he devoted himself when non engaged inside military machine service. However, getting attracted a notice of L. Valerius Flaccus, he was brought to Rome, and became successively quaestor (204), aedile (199), praetor (198), and consul (195) with his old patron.

In a period of his early career he in vain opposed the annulment of the lex Oppia, passed in a period of the Second Punic War to restrict luxury & extravagance on the section of women. Meanwhile he served around Africa, participate in the crowning campaign of Zama. He held commands within Sardinia, where he 1st showed his nonindulgent public morality, & inside Spain, which he reduced to subjection by having low cruelty, gaining thereby the honour of a triumph (194).

In the month 191 BC he acted as military tribune in the war against Antiochus of Syrithe, and played an crucial a share within a battle at Thermopylae, which signalled the prevent of the Seleucid invasion of Greece.

His reputation as a soldier was at present constituted; henceforward he favorite to serve a state home, scrutinizing a conduct of the candidates for public honours & of generals in the field. Whenever he was non personally engaged in the prosecution of the Scipios (Africanus & Asiaticus) for corruption, it was his spirit that animated the attack upon the babies. Possibly Scipio Africanus, who refused to reply to the charge, saying just, "Romans, this is the day on which I conquered Hannibal," & was absolved by eclat, witnessed it necessary to retire self-banished to his villa at Liternum. Cato's enmity dated from either a African campaign whenever he quarrelled by using Scipio for his shower distribution of a spoil amongst the troops, & his general luxury & extravagance.

Cato got, yet, a further good project to perform inside opposing a spread of the recently Hellenic culture which threatened to kill the rugged simplicity of the conventional Roman nature and severity. He conceived it to become his favorite mission to resist this invasion. It was in a discharge of a censorship that this determination was virtually all strongly exhibited, & hence that he derived the title (the Censor) by which he is virtually all typically distinguished. He revised by owning unsparing nature & severity a lists of senators and knights, ejecting from either choose a men whom he estimated undeserving of it, either in moral evidence or even from their need of the prescribed means. A expulsion of L. Quinctius Flamininus for wanton cruelty was an example of his rigid justice.

His regulations against luxury were super rigorous. He imposed the heavily taxation upon dress & private adornment, especially of women, & upon immature slaves purchased when favourites. Inside 181 BC he supported the lex Orchia (based on datthe from others, he total 1 opposed its introduction, & afterward its abrogation), which prescribed a limit to the number of guests at an amusement, & around 169 BC the lex Voconia, one of a provisions of which was arranged to prevent the accumulation of an undue proportion of wealth in the mitts of women.

Amongst more items he repaired a aqueducts, filtered a sewers, prevented personal souls drawing off public a river for their have utilize, ordered a demolition of houses which encroached on a public way, & built the number one basilica in the forum near the curia (Livy, History, 39.44; Plutarch, Marcus Cato, 19). He raised a total paid per publicani for a right of farming a revenue enhancement, & at a equivalent period diminished the contract numbers for the construction of public works.

From either a date of his censorship (184) to his dying in [[149 BC], Cato held no public office, but continued to distinguish himself in the senate as the persistent opponent of the new ideas. He was struck with horror, along with many other Romans of the graver stamp, at the licence of the Bacchanalian mysteries, which he attributed to the fatal influence of Greek manners; and he vehemently urged the dismissal of the philosophers (Carneades, Diogenes, and Critolaus), who came as ambassadors from Athens, on account of the dangerous nature of the views expressed by them.

He had a horror of physicians, who were chiefly Greeks. He procured the release of Polybius, the historian, and his fellow prisoners, contemptuously asking whether the senate had nothing more important to do than discuss whether a few Greeks should die at Rome or in their own land. It was not till his eightieth year that he made his first acquaintance with Greek literature, though some think after examining his writings that he may have had a knowledge of Greek works for much of his life.

Almost his last public act was to urge his countrymen to the Third Punic War and the destruction of Carthage. In 157 BC he was one of the deputies sent to Carthage to arbitrate between the Carthaginians and Massinissa, king of Numidia. The mission was unsuccessful and the commissioners returned home. But Cato was so struck by the evidences of Carthaginian prosperity that he was convinced that the security of Rome depended on the annihilation of Carthage. From this time, in season and out of season, he kept repeating the cry: "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam." (Moreover, I advise that Carthage should be destroyed. - Plutarch, Life of Cato) He was known for saying this at the conclusion of each of his speeches.

To Cato the individual life was a continual discipline, and public life was the discipline of the many. He regarded the individual householder as the germ of the family, the family as the germ of the state. By strict economy of time he accomplished an immense amount of work; he exacted similar application from his dependents, and proved himself a hard husband, a strict father, a severe and cruel master. There was little difference apparently, in the esteem in which he held his wife and his slaves; his pride alone induced him to take a warmer interest in his sons.

To the Romans themselves there was little in this behaviour which seemed worthy of censure; it was respected rather as a traditional example of the old Roman manners. In the remarkable passage (xxxix. 40) in which Livy describes the character of Cato, there is no word of blame for the rigid discipline of his household.

Cato perhaps deserves even more notice as a literary man than as a statesman or a soldier. He was an annalist, the first Latin prose writer of any importance, and the first author of a history of Rome in Latin. His treatise on agriculture (De Agricultura or De Re Rustica) is the only work by him that has been preserved; it is not agreed whether the work we possess is the original or a later revision. It contains a miscellaneous collection of rules of good husbandry, conveying much curious information on the domestic habits of the Romans of his age. His most important work, Origines, in seven books, related the history of Rome from its earliest foundations to his own day. It was so called from the second and third books, which described the rise of the different Italian towns. Some consider that if it were not for his impact of Latin prose, Latin might have been supplanted by Greek.

His speeches, of which as many as 150 were collected, were principally directed against the young free-thinking and loose-principled nobles of the day. He also wrote a set of maxims for the use of his son (Praecepta ad Filium) and a simple history of Rome "In Big Letters" (Plutarch), also for his sons, and some rules for everyday life in verse (Carmen de Moribus).

The two collections of proverbs (Distichs of Cato, Monosticha Catonis) in hexameter verse, probably belong to the 4th century AD, and are mistakenly attributed to Cato the Elder.