most precious literary treasures of Rome. From his time downwards the
stream of written oratory flowed, at first in a slender stream, which
gathered to a larger volume in the works of the elder Cato.

In the history of the half-century following the war with Hannibal, Cato
is certainly the most striking single figure. It is only as a man of
letters that he has to be noticed here; and the character of a man of
letters was, perhaps, the last in which he would have wished to be
remembered or praised. Yet the cynical and indomitable old man, with his
rough humour, his narrow statesmanship, his obstinate ultra-conservatism,
not only produced a large quantity of writings, but founded and
transmitted to posterity a distinct and important body of critical dogma
and literary tradition. The influence of Greece had, as we have already
seen, begun to permeate the educated classes at Rome through and through.
Against this Greek influence, alike in literature and in manners, Cato
struggled all his life with the whole force of his powerful intellect and
mordant wit; yet it is most characteristic of the man that in his old age
he learned Greek himself and read deeply in the masterpieces of that
Greek literature from which he was too honest and too intelligent to be
able to withhold his admiration. While much of contemporary literature
was launching itself on the fatal course of imitation of Greek models,
and was forcing the Latin language into the trammels of alien forms, Cato
gave it a powerful impulse towards a purely native, if a somewhat narrow
and harsh development. The national prose literature, of which he may
fairly be called the founder, was kept up till the decay of Rome by a
large and powerful minority of Latin writers. What results it might have
produced, if allowed unchecked scope, can only be matter for conjecture;
in the main current of Latin literature the Greek influence was, on the
whole, triumphant; Cato's was the losing side (if one may so adapt the
famous line of Lucan), and the men of genius took the other.