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office as quaestor, or paymaster.
    Soon he would be aedile, praetor and consul in quick suc­cession, later becoming censor, by which title he is best known.
    According to Livy, Romans of a future generation regarded Cato as the personification of old school manners, of severe, inflexible attitudes already thought reactionary by many in his lifetime. His ethos was stern in its simplicity. He despised luxury and extravagance, attacking their manifestations with relentless impartiality. He railed tirelessly against relaxed morals, especially among the young, and in women, whom he seems to have viewed with misogynistic rancour.
    Respected widely as embodying traditional Roman traits, Marcus Cato cannot be recalled as an endearing man. Privately, he was a hard husband, seemingly regarding his wife as a household slave; an unaffectionate father; an often cruel master to his servants. In office, he was diligent, repairing aqueducts, supervising the cleansing of sewers, ensuring the safety of public places, generally scourging what he saw as social mischief. Since he disapproved implacably of the new ideas concomitant with Rome's expanding experience in the 3rd and 2nd centuries, this was a sweeping brief. Among other things, he resisted the fashionable importation of Hellenic culture and urged the ex­pulsion from Rome of foreign philosophers. The popularity of alien religious cults disgusted him.
    Zama found Cato serving under a soldier of very different character. Scipio, though essentially a man of action, was broad-minded, cultured and magnanimous - a strange mixture of patriot and cosmopolite, mystic and adventurer. Convinced of Rome's imperial and protective mission, he applied himself to martial and diplomatic tasks with a worldliness far removed from the rigidities of Cato.
    Long, dangerous campaigns, often far from reinforcement, had taught Scipio the value of rewarding his troops in victory and of showing restraint to beaten enemies. Meanness com­manded the devotion neither of the Roman soldier nor his allies, and very real devotion had been Scipio's through a de­cade of campaigning up to Zama. In Africa, as elsewhere, he indulged both his men and himself generously in their triumphs, distributing spoil open-handedly.
    Cato's austere sensibilities were duly shocked. The future censor did not conceal his disapproval of such wasteful extrava­gance. By the time the Hannibalic war ended, the political op­ponents of Scipio had gained an officious and outspoken friend.
    In the opening years of the new century, Cato was pro­minent not only in administration but as a force for colonial repression. After holding a command in Sardinia, he acquired a cruel reputation in 194 subduing the resistance of Spanish tribes. Three years later he landed in Greece as a tribune under consul Manilius Glabro to oppose the Syrian invasion. As vigor­ous in battle as in the senate, Cato distinguished himself at Thermopylae by leading a column through the hills to take the enemy in the rear.
    Back in Rome, his stature now formidable, Cato became the animating spirit of a series of attacks against Scipio and his brother Lucius for their handling of the Syrian War in its final phase. The generous foreign policy of Scipio, the easy terms he proposed for Antiochus, his approval of Greek culture - all became ammunition for the doughty Cato in a feud which had assumed bitter proportions since Zama.
    Honourably, if rashly, Scipio managed his defence in a singularly unprofessional fashion - on ground dominated by the enemy, and with weapons in which they were more skilled. Though convinced of public sympathy, he offered no popular challenge to the senatorial power of his opponents, confining himself to formal political methods. With little talent for such, he was at the mercy of the anti-Scipionic camp. It was Cato's hour. The military command of Lucius was ter­minated, the treaty with Antiochus severely modified. The so- called trials of the Scipios