Marcus Porcius Cato

Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) also known as the Cato Major or Cato the Elder, was surnamed Censor, Priscus, and Sapiens. He was born at Tusculum, a self-governed town of Latium, fifteen miles south of Rome, of a good old family, and trained to rustic, frugal life. However, he ultimately become a politician after serving occasionally in the army, and removed to Rome. In succession, he became censor, ædile, prætor, and consul. He served in the second Punic war, towards the end of it, and subjugated Spain.

Cato the Elder was a Roman of the old school, disliked and denounced all innovations, as censor dealt sharply with them, sent on an embassy to Africa, was so struck with the increasing power and the threateningly evil ascendency of Carthage, that on his return he urged its demolition, and in every speech which he delivered afterwards he ended with the words, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, literally in English "But, be that as it may, my opinion is Carthage must be destroyed".

Wisdom & Quotes

• Carthago delenda est. ( Carthage must be destroyed)

- in speeches after the Second Punic War

• All mankind rules its women, and we rule all mankind, but our women rule us.

- quoted by Plutarch in Apophthegmata regum et imperatorum

• Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise; for the wise shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.

- quoted by Plutarch in Life of Cato

• I could not live with a man whose palate was more sensitive than his heart.

- quoted by Plutarch in Life of Cato

• Those who are eager to hold high office frequently, are like men who did not know the road, they sought to be ever attended on their way by lictors, lest they go astray.

- quoted by Plutarch in Life of Cato

• The lover his soul dwelt in the body of another.

- quoted by Plutarch in Life of Cato

• Man, old age has disgraces enough of its own; do not add to them the shame of vice.

- quoted by Plutarch in Life of Cato

• The man who struck his wife or child, laid violent hands on the holiest of holy things.

- quoted by Plutarch in Life of Cato

• Buy not what you want, but what you have need of; what you do not want is dear at a farthing.

- quoted by Seneca

• Grasp the subject, the words will follow.

- quoted by Julius Victor in Art of Rhetoric

• Those who commit private theft pass their lives in confinement and fetters; plunderers of the public, in gold and purple.

- attributed by Aulus Gellius in Noctes Atticae

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