Cato the Elder: The Roman politician who relentlessly pursued the destruction of Carthage

During the early third century BCE, Rome stood at a turning point in its political and military development.

After Rome had defeated Pyrrhus of Epirus in 275 BCE, it completed its conquest of the Italian peninsula and turned outward toward new enemies.

The First Punic War, which began in 264 BCE, had introduced Rome to the demands of overseas warfare and brought it into direct conflict with the powerful city-state of Carthage.

After it had secured victory in 241 BCE, Rome claimed Sicily as its first province and began to manage conquered territories on foreign soil.

The Lex Claudia of 218 BCE had attempted to limit elite economic power by banning senators from owning large trading ships, yet wealth continued to gather among Rome's most powerful families. 

At the same time, Rome’s expansion created internal problems. A growing number of senators, merchants, and generals acquired large estates that were worked by enslaved labourers, and the gap between rich and poor widened.

Roman society remained based on farming ideals, yet the economic effects of conquest introduced new ways of thinking and living.

For many citizens, the old values of austerity and simplicity no longer matched the wealth and luxury now visible in daily life.

Latifundia, or large landed estates, replaced the small farms that once defined Roman citizenship. 

As foreign goods, ideas, and customs arrived from the East, those who valued tradition feared that Rome’s moral values would erode.

Some citizens embraced Greek art, literature, and education, while others saw such habits as signs of weakness and corruption.

Cato belonged to the second group. He formed his views in a world largely shaped by war and recovery, where cultural change often brought both opportunity and danger. 

Cato began his military service during the Second Punic War, which erupted in 218 BCE when Hannibal Barca led his army across the Alps and invaded Italy.

Ancient sources place Cato in the war, though the exact year that he became military tribune is uncertain.

By 209 BCE, he had risen through the ranks and had served under the consul Claudius Nero in southern Italy.

After the Roman army suffered devastating defeats earlier in the war, it had begun to rebuild and take the offensive.

It is said that Cato stood out through discipline and bravery, together with strict obedience to command; however, there is no direct evidence that he participated in the famous Battle of Metaurus in 207 BCE, but some historians speculate that he may have taken part in the operations surrounding the campaign. 

Later, he joined operations in Hispania, where he helped put down local rebellions and contributed to Roman efforts to assert control across the region.

He supported harsh tactics because he believed that swift punishment would often prevent further resistance.

According to later sources, he treated local leaders with disrespect and favoured results over diplomacy.

For Cato, military duty represented both a civic obligation and a test of character.

He fought against tribes such as the Celtiberians, who resisted Roman rule firmly. 

As a result of these campaigns, Cato developed a personal belief that combined patriotism with strict morals, as he came to see war as both a test of strength and a test of values.

Soldiers who lived simply, worked hard, and obeyed commands became symbols of what Rome needed to survive.

He carried those lessons into his political life and returned to them often in his writings and in the moral principles that were expressed in later parts of his speeches. 

After the war, Cato entered the political arena by winning election as quaestor in 204 BCE.

He moved quickly through the public offices, where he impressed his peers with a direct speaking style, careful legal arguments, and a firm belief in Roman tradition.

He gained influence when he brought charges against magistrates who were accused of corruption, and he positioned himself as a defender of old Roman values.

His reputation as a principled conservative spread across the Forum and into the Senate chamber. 

In 195 BCE, he became consul alongside Lucius Valerius Flaccus. During his term, he led a campaign in Hispania, where he crushed a rebellion and imposed penalties on the defeated tribes.

His actions included selling thousands into slavery and seizing land for Rome. He had returned to the capital with a triumph and had used the victory to strengthen his political credibility.

According to Plutarch, Cato argued that thieves of public money deserved harsher punishment than temple robbers, since they stole from the state rather than the gods. 

He later won the office of censor in 184 BCE, which gave him wide powers to change the Senate’s membership, set rules for public behaviour, and oversee finances.

He expelled senators for what he considered moral failings, raised taxes on luxury goods, and reduced government spending.

His censorship reflected a deep belief that Rome had grown too comfortable and too willing to tolerate extravagance.

For Cato, civic health required personal discipline, and he used his authority to enforce it.

He also commissioned the construction of the Basilica Porcia, the first of its kind in Rome, which was to be used as a space for legal business. 

Many historians opint to Cato’s conservatism beginning with his upbringing in the rural town of Tusculum, where he worked on his family’s farm and studied Roman law.

He viewed agricultural labour as the source of Roman strength and despised idleness, excess, and luxury.

He absorbed the values of the mos maiorum, the ancestral customs that he believed defined true citizenship. 

He expressed these views in his treatise De Agricultura, which he wrote not only as a manual for farmers but as a moral guide for Roman landowners.

The work included strict financial advice together with practical instructions that explained how to manage slaves and explicit warnings against softness and waste.

For example, he recommended selling old or ill slaves to reduce costs, and he condemned the use of foreign luxuries in household affairs.

His writing revealed a consistent view: prosperity should support discipline, not comfort.

He also offered recipes and religious rites alongside methods for producing wine and olive oil, reflecting his belief that household management was a civic duty. 

Specifically, Cato opposed the influence of Greek culture and warned that foreign ideas would weaken Roman values.

Although he eventually learned Greek in later life, he continued to criticise its effects on Roman youth, because he argued that philosophy, art, and theatre softened the minds of young citizens.

He particularly distrusted Greek doctors and warned that their methods posed a threat to Roman health.

He used his speeches to attack wealthy senators who supported Hellenistic ideas or sponsored public entertainments copied from the East.

He expressed the belief that it was better to live as a principled Roman than to imitate the 'cleverness' of the Greeks. 

For Cato, public virtue required personal restraint. He dressed plainly, ate modestly, and insisted that his sons be educated without tutors from foreign lands.

In debates, he criticised senators who wore purple garments, dined on imported delicacies, or wasted public money on unnecessary projects.

As his influence grew, so did his efforts to restore the old Republic, which he viewed as slipping away under the weight of empire and indulgence. 

By the final years of his life, Cato had come to see Carthage as the single greatest threat to Roman security.

Although the city had lost its navy, its colonies, and its military power in the Second Punic War, it remained a wealthy and independent centre of trade.

In 157 BCE, Cato had travelled to Carthage as part of a diplomatic mission and had returned concerned by the prosperity he had witnessed.

According to him, the city had recovered too quickly and too fully. 

From that point onward, he ended every speech in the Senate with the same phrase: Carthago delenda est, "Carthage must be destroyed."

Even when discussing unrelated legislation, he repeated the warning, ensuring that the Senate never forgot the danger.

He once brought fresh figs from Carthage into the chamber and used them to show how close the city lay to Roman shores.

Scipio Nasica, by contrast, argued that Carthage should be preserved to keep Rome vigilant and morally restrained. 

Eventually, his argument gained support and, un 149 BCE, Carthage went to war with Numidia, an action that many Romans saw as a violation of its treaty with Rome and that provided the Senate with a reason to act.

Masinissa, the king of Numidia and ally of Rome, had provoked the conflict by encroaching on Carthaginian territory.

War began, and Roman forces, under Scipio Aemilianus, laid siege to the city. Over three years, they broke its defences, entered its streets, and destroyed it stone by stone.

Carthage fell in 146 BCE, and its land became the Roman province of Africa. 

Sadly, Cato did not live to see the final victory, but his fixation with Carthage revealed a deeper anxiety about Rome itself, an anxiety that empire, if left unchecked, could replace duty with comfort and loyalty with greed.