A Collection of Surviving Passages from Rome’s First Prose Writer
What the Work Is
Fragments is a 1980 collection of the surviving textual remains of Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder (234–149 BC), the Roman statesman, soldier, and historian who was the first to write history in Latin. The volume gathers the extant pieces of Cato’s writings—works that survive only in quotations and references by later authors, since the originals were lost. Cato’s Origines, a history of Rome, is known today solely through such fragments, as are his many speeches, letters, and treatises. The collection also encompasses his De agri cultura, a treatise on agriculture, rituals, and recipes, which holds the distinction of being the oldest extant prose written in the Latin language.
What the Book Is About
The volume presents the fragmentary legacy of a writer whose work spanned history, oratory, agriculture, and practical morality. Cato wrote during the middle decades of the second century BC, a period when Rome was transforming from an Italian city-state into a Mediterranean power. His writings reflect the concerns of a man deeply committed to traditional Roman values and suspicious of the Greek cultural influences that were entering Roman life. The fragments preserve not only historical narrative but also the voice of a politician who used writing as an extension of his public career—his speeches, delivered in the forum and the senate, were circulated in written form and quoted by later generations.
Key Ideas and Themes
The fragments reveal Cato’s central preoccupations: the defense of traditional Roman morality, the importance of agriculture as the foundation of Roman character, and the dangers posed by luxury and foreign influence. His Origines was groundbreaking in its approach to history—unlike earlier Roman historians who wrote in Greek, Cato wrote in Latin, and he included the stories of Italian peoples rather than focusing exclusively on Rome itself. The work took its name from the origins of the Italian cities and peoples, treating Rome’s rise within a broader Italian context.
Cato’s speeches, of which only fragments survive, show him as a tireless advocate of frugality and discipline. He opposed the repeal of the Oppian Law, which restricted women’s display of luxury, and he attacked generals whom he considered extravagant or corrupt. His famous phrase “Carthage must be destroyed,” which he appended to his speeches in the senate during his later years, reflected his conviction that Rome’s security depended on the annihilation of its rival. The fragments also preserve his practical wisdom about farming, household management, and the virtues of hard work—the De agri cultura offers advice on everything from planting crops to making wine and managing slaves.
Structure and Approach
The collection is organized around the known works of Cato, presenting the surviving fragments of each in sequence. The Origines fragments include passages quoted by later historians such as Livy and Plutarch, who drew on Cato’s work as a source. The speeches are represented by the passages that later authors—particularly Cicero, who admired Cato’s eloquence—chose to quote or paraphrase. The De agri cultura survives more completely than Cato’s other works, and its practical, instructional tone stands in contrast to the political and historical fragments.
The fragmentary nature of the material means that the reader encounters Cato’s thought indirectly, through the filter of later writers who preserved his words for their own purposes. This makes the collection valuable not only for what it shows about Cato himself but also for what it reveals about how later Romans remembered and used his legacy.
Significance and Influence
Cato’s importance in Roman literary and political history is difficult to overstate. As the first writer of Latin prose, he established a tradition that would culminate in the works of Cicero, Caesar, and Livy. His decision to write history in Latin rather than Greek was a deliberate assertion of Roman cultural independence at a time when Greek literature and philosophy were gaining influence among the Roman elite. His Origines set a precedent for Roman historiography, even though the work itself was lost.
The fragments also preserve the voice of a political faction that opposed Hellenization—the adoption of Greek customs, education, and luxury. Cato’s conservatism, his emphasis on ancestral customs, and his suspicion of foreign influences made him a symbol of old Roman virtue for later generations. Cicero, writing two centuries later, portrayed Cato as the embodiment of Roman wisdom in his dialogue on old age. The collection of fragments thus offers modern readers access to a crucial figure in Roman history—a man whose writings shaped Roman identity even as they disappeared, surviving only in the quotations and references of the authors who came after him.
The source material details that during his consulship in 195 BC, Cato enacted the first two of the Porcian Laws. These laws expanded the protections of Roman citizens against degrading or capricious punishment under the Republic’s Valerian Law. This legislative action is presented as a distinct achievement of his term in office, separate from his military and administrative activities.
The Campaign in Hispania Citerior
The account of Cato’s post-consulship campaign in Hispania Citerior is detailed in the source. He is described as living soberly, sharing the food and labors of the common soldier, and personally superintending the execution of his orders where possible. His movements were reported as bold and rapid, and his operations were carefully designed and coordinated with other generals. He managed to benefit by setting tribe against tribe and took native mercenaries into his pay. The source notes that the details of the campaign, as related by Livy and illustrated by Plutarch, are full of horror, and make clear that Cato reduced the province to subjection with great speed and little mercy. It was during this period that he coined the phrase bellum se ipsum alet—the war will feed itself. He claimed to have destroyed more towns in Hispania than he had spent days in that country.
Administrative Reforms and Triumph
After reducing the area between the River Iberus and the Pyrenees to obedience, Cato turned his attention to administrative reforms, increasing the revenues of the province by improvements in the working of the iron and silver mines. For his achievements, the senate decreed a thanksgiving ceremony of three days. In 194 BC, he returned to Rome and was rewarded with a Roman triumph, at which he exhibited an extraordinary quantity of captured brass, silver, and gold, both coin and ingots. He distributed the monetary prize to his soldiery, being more liberal than might have been expected from his vigorous parsimony.
The Battle of Thermopylae
The source describes Cato’s later military service as a legatus under the consul Manius Acilius Glabrio in 191 BC, dispatched to Greece to oppose the invasion of Antiochus III. At the decisive Battle of Thermopylae, Cato behaved with his usual valor. By a daring and difficult advance, he surprised and defeated a body of the enemy’s Aetolian auxiliaries posted upon the Callidromus, the highest peak of the range of Mount Oeta. Coming to the aid of forces under Flaccus’s command, he began a sudden descent from the hills above the royal camp, and the panic caused by this unexpected movement turned the day in favor of the Romans. After the action, the consul hugged Cato and attributed to him the whole credit of the victory. This fact rests on the authority of Cato himself, who, like Cicero, often indulged in the habit of sounding his own praises. Cato was then sent to Rome to announce the successful outcome, performing his journey with such celerity that he had started his report in the senate before the return of Lucius Cornelius Scipio, who had been sent off from Greece a few days before him.
The Censorship
The source provides extensive detail on Cato’s censorship in 184 BC. He revised with unsparing severity the lists of senators and knights, ejecting from either order the men whom he judged unworthy of membership, either on moral grounds or on the basis of their lack of the prescribed means. The expulsion of L. Quinctius Flamininus for wanton cruelty is given as an example of his rigid justice. His regulations against luxury were very stringent; he imposed a heavy tax upon dress and personal adornment, especially of women, and upon young slaves purchased as favourites. In 181 BC he supported the lex Orchia, which prescribed a limit to the number of guests at an entertainment, and in 169 BC the lex Voconia, one of whose provisions was intended to limit the accumulation of wealth in the hands of women.
Public Works and Their Opposition
The source details Cato’s public works during his censorship. He repaired the aqueducts, mended as well as extended the sewage system, and prevented private persons from drawing off public water for their own use. He ordered the demolition of shops and private houses which encroached on the public way, and built the first known basilica in 184 BC, named Basilica Porcia, in the Forum near the Curia. It served as a political and commercial activity center where courts were held and merchants accumulated. Some accounts state that the basilica was burned by the conflagration of Publius Clodius Pulcher’s funeral pyre after his death in 52 BC, and was probably never rebuilt. Today, there are no remains of Basilica Porcia. Cato had also raised the amount paid by the publicani for the right to collect taxes and, at the same time, reduced the contract prices for the construction of public works. According to Plutarch, the Senate “strongly opposed the erection of the basilica”. His expenditure on public works were objected by the party of Titus Flamininus and also deemed trivial by the Senate. After gaining influence, Flamininus repealed the public rentals and contracts of Cato while encouraging tribunes to ferment opprobrium against him and fine him.
Later Years and Opposition to Hellenism
From the date of his censorship to his death in 149, 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 at the licence of the Bacchanalian mysteries, which he attributed to the influence of Greek manners, and he vehemently urged the dismissal of the philosophers Carneades, Diogenes, and Critolaus, who had come as ambassadors from Athens, on account of what he believed was the dangerous nature of their ideas. He also uttered warnings against the influence of Chaldean astrologers who had entered Italy along with Greek culture. He had a horror of physicians, who were chiefly Greeks. He obtained 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 until 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.
The Final Years and Carthage
In his last years, he was known for strenuously urging his countrymen to prosecute a Third Punic War and to destroy Carthage. In 157, he was one of the deputies sent to Carthage to arbitrate between the Carthaginians and Massinissa, king of Numidia. The mission was unsuccessful, but Cato was so struck by Carthage’s growing prosperity that he was convinced that the security of Rome depended on its annihilation. From then on, he began concluding his speeches in the Senate—on any topic whatsoever—with the cry, “Carthage must be destroyed” (Carthago delenda est). Other times, his phrase is fully quoted as “Moreover, I advise that Carthage must be destroyed” (Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam). Cicero’s dialogue Cato the Elder on Old Age also depicted Cato’s antipathy to Carthage. According to Ben Kiernan, Cato may have made the first recorded incitement to genocide.
