Cato the Elder

Biography

Marcus Porcius Cato — Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor — served as a soldier in the Second Punic War and as a senior senator in the generation that finished the Punic Wars. As censor in 184 BC he was famous for aggressive moral conservatism, opposition to Greek cultural influence, and the stern enforcement of traditional Roman virtues. His most famous political obsession was the destruction of Carthage. Cato had visited Carthage on a senatorial mission in the 150s BC and was alarmed — or claimed to be alarmed — at its recovered prosperity. He began ending every speech in the Senate, on whatever subject, with the phrase 'Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam' — 'Furthermore I consider that Carthage must be destroyed.' It became perhaps the most famous political slogan in Roman history. His rival Scipio Nasica opposed destruction, arguing that Rome needed a rival to keep it from going soft. Cato won the argument. The Third Punic War (149–146 BC) was largely the result of Roman political manipulation designed to give Carthage no option but the war it could not win. When Carthage was finally destroyed in 146 BC, Cato had been dead for three years — he died in 149 BC, just as the war he had demanded finally began.

Key Battles