Cato the Elder

Marcus Porcius Cato came from a plebeian military family and fought with distinction in the Second Punic War as a young tribune. A patrician patron noticed him and brought him to Rome, where he climbed the offices: quaestor in 204 BC, aedile, praetor, then consul in 195 alongside his patron Flaccus. As consul he tried and failed to stop the repeal of a law restricting women's luxury spending, then led a triumphant military campaign in Hispania. He fought at Thermopylae as a legate and in 184 BC became censor, taxing luxuries and overseeing public works while forcing Scipio Africanus into retirement. He wrote the first Latin history, the now-fragmentary Origines, and De agri cultura - a treatise on farming and rituals that remains the oldest complete work of Latin prose. He spent his later years fighting Hellenization and adopting a violently anti-Carthaginian stance that became his signature.