The name of Cato the Censor, naturally induces a few observations on the character of this ancient specimen of the
"Fine old Roman gentleman all of the olden time."
He was the son of a respectable Sabine farmer, and passed his earliest years in the country, where he followed the plough--a peaceful pursuit, which imprints no early furrows on the forehead, but leaves many on the earth it at once improves and lacerates. At seventeen, every Roman became, of necessity, a soldier; and though in the game of life fortune had dealt him a spade, he was obliged to throw it out of his hand. Such was the lot of young Marcus Porcius Priscus; for that was in reality his name, though he afterwards had the title of Cato, or the "knowing one," bestowed on him. His military duties were performed with credit, though he preferred cultivating any other seeds than the seeds of dissension; and he was more at home in a trench dug for celery, than in one designed for undermining a fort.
After returning from the wars, he took some ground adjoining that which had been occupied by Dentatus; and regarding that individual as a model farmer, Cato tried to make his own a model farm. So thoroughly did he throw himself into his agrarian occupation, that he may be said to have buried himself in his land. He wrote a work on Agriculture,[58] which included much miscellaneous information, from the mode of buying an estate to the art of making a cheesecake, the curing of a side of bacon, and the setting of a dislocated bone. While attending to his own business, he found leisure to attend to that of his neighbours; and in all their petty disputes before the local tribunals, he was in the habit of attending the hearing of summonses for and against his friends. He had a word of advice or a maxim to meet every circumstance in which his advice was asked or offered; and he could always cut through a difficulty with one of his wise saws. Some might be disposed to term him a busybody and a meddler; but at all events a young patrician, named Valerius Flaccus, considered him to be a meddler well worth transplanting, and persuaded him to go to Rome, "as," in the language of Plutarch, "a plant that deserved a better soil." Here he "put up" for various places in the public service, and we find him climbing successively to several very high posts, where the example he set by his externally virtuous mode of living, formed a decent contrast to the undisguised vices of the age.