164 Cato and the new school 



often coincided. Estates near the city (suburbana) were mostly, if not 

 in all cases, held as resorts for rest or pleasure. If a steward could 

 grow a fair supply of farm -produce, so much the better : but the duty 

 of having all ready for visits of the master and his friends was the 

 first charge on his time and attention. Even at some considerable 

 distance from the city the same condition prevailed, if an estate lay 

 near a main road and thus could be reached without inconvenient 

 exertion. 



XXIII. CATO. 



The book de agri cultural of M Porcius Cato (234149 EC) is a 

 remarkable work by a remarkable man. It is generally agreed that it 

 represents his views, though the form in which it has come down to us 

 has led to differences of opinion as to the degree in which the language 

 has been modified in transmission. We need only consider some of the 

 contemporary facts and movements with which Cato was brought into 

 contact and which affected his mental attitude as a public man. He 

 took part in the second Punic war, and died just as the third war was 

 beginning: thus he missed seeing the destruction of the great city which 

 it had in his later years been his passion to destroy. The success of the 

 highly organized Punic agriculture is said 2 to have been one of the cir- 

 cumstances that alarmed his keen jealousy : but we can hardly doubt 

 that he like others got many a hint from the rustic system of Carthage. 

 Another of his antagonisms was a stubborn opposition to Greek in- 

 fluences. In the first half of the second century BC, the time of his 

 chief activities, these influences were penetrating Roman society more 

 and more deeply as Roman supremacy spread further and further to 

 the East. We need not dwell on his denunciations of Greek corruption 

 in general and warnings against the menace to Roman thrift and 

 simplicity. A good instance may be found in the injunction 3 to his 

 son, to have nothing whatever to do with Greek doctors, a pack of 

 rascals who mean to poison all 'barbarians/ who charge fees to 

 enhance the value of their services, and have the impudence to apply 

 the term ' barbarians ' to us. The leader of the good-old-Roman party 

 was at least thorough in his hates. And his antipathies were not con- 

 fined to foreigners and foreign ways, but found ample scope at home 

 in opposition to the newer school of politicians, whose views were less 

 narrow and hearty than his own. 



In Cato's time the formation of great landed estates, made easy 

 by the ruin of many peasant farmers in the second Punic war, was in 



1 Text edited by Keil 1895. 2 Plutarch Cato maior 27. 



3 Jordan's edition of his remains, p 77, Plut Cat mat 23. 



