Plutarch, a Greek writer around 100 AD, wrote Parallel Lives: paired biographies matching famous Greeks with famous Romans. This is the Roman half of one pair: Marcus Porcius Cato, later Cato the Elder, a farmer who rose in the Roman Republic — a city run by a senate and elected officials, not a king. He lived in the second century BC and came from a Sabine farm in the hills of Italy.

Cato made a career of hardness. A “new man” without famous ancestors, he fought in Spain, then as censor — an official who punished morals and contracts — he went after tax-farmers and measured a citizen’s furniture. He hated Greek luxury and Carthage, a rival in what is now Tunisia, and ended speeches demanding that city be destroyed until the Third Punic War. Plutarch sets him opposite Aristides, an Athenian known for justice. Cato wrote the Origines, an early history of Italy, and a book on farming. Even his jokes were prosecutions. A portrait of a man who wanted Rome lean.