Character Catalog

The first Latin prose treatise preserved in its entirety, it blends practical advice on managing a farming estate with recipes and religious prescriptions. A masterpiece of Latin technical literature, it also reveals Cato's worldview: land, labor, and tradition.

The first major historical work in Latin, in seven books, tracing the origins of the Italic peoples and the wars of Rome. Cato deliberately avoided naming individual generals in order to glorify the Roman people as a whole rather than any single person.

An educational handbook Cato wrote for his son Marcus, covering medicine, agriculture, rhetoric, and morality. A valuable testimony to the archaic Roman educational ideal passed down from father to son.

Cato was the first Roman to have his own speeches preserved and published: more than 150 titles are known, of which around fifty survive in fragments. Cicero regarded him as the founder of Latin oratory.

A collection of moral precepts in rhythmic prose on ancestral Roman virtues. In it, Cato extolled frugality, courage in battle, and contempt for luxury as the foundations of Roman greatness.

When our ancestors were asked who was the best man, they would answer: a good farmer, a good cultivator. He who received this praise was held in the highest honor.

In this work, Cato traced the legendary origins of the Italic cities and the wars of Rome, deliberately refusing to name military commanders in order to highlight the Roman people as a whole.

He pleaded before the Roman people on behalf of the Lusitanians massacred by the praetor Galba, securing public condemnation of this act of treachery.

In this work, Cato set out the ancestral rules of Roman conduct, emphasizing frugality, working the land, and contempt for luxury as the foundations of virtue.

A town in Latium where Cato was born around 234 BC, into a family of small landowners. Nestled in the Alban Hills, this recently Romanized city instilled in him a deep attachment to peasant and military values.

The political heart of Rome where Cato delivered countless speeches, sat in the Senate, and held every public office. It was here that he hammered home his famous refrain about Carthage and waged his battle against Greek influence.

Rome's relentless rival, whose destruction Cato never stopped demanding. He is said to have brought fresh figs from Carthage to the Senate floor to illustrate how dangerously close the enemy city was.

Cato led a military campaign here in 195 BC during his consulship, pacifying much of Hispania Citerior. He demonstrated both his skill as a military commander and his reputation as a strict administrator.

In 191 BC, Cato played a decisive role in Rome's victory against Antiochus III by outflanking the enemy positions at this famous pass. A remarkable military feat that cemented his reputation as a commander.