Marcus porcius cato biography of georgetown university

He was distinguished as a jurist. His father paid great attention to his education, physical as well as mental, and studied to preserve his young mind from every immoral taint. He was taught to ride, swim, wrestle, fence, and, perhaps to the injury of a weak constitution, was exposed to vicissitudes of cold and heat in order to harden his frame.

His father would not allow his learned slave Chilo to superintend the education of his son, lest the boy should acquire slavish notions or habits, but wrote lessons of history for him in large letters with his own hand, and afterwards composed a kind of Encyclopaedia for his use.

The man who was Marcus Porcius Cato, the censor, understood that his much delayed reading of Greek literature was itself indicative of his soul.

Under such tuition, the young Cato became a wise and virtuous man. The legion to which he belonged having been disbanded, he took the military oath a second time, by the advice of his father, in order to qualify himself legally to fight against the enemy. He distinguished himself in the battle by his personal prowess in a combat in which he first lost and finally recovered his sword.

The details of this combat are related with variations by several authors. Here again his father seems to have cautioned him to take no further part in battle, as after his discharge he was no longer a soldier. Henceforward he appears to have devoted himself to the practice of the law , in which he attained considerable eminence. In the obscure and corrupt fragment of Sextus Pomponius ' de Origine Juris , [ 8 ] after mentioning Sextus and Publius Aelius and Publius Atilius, the author proceeds to speak of the two Catos.

Marcus Porcius Cato ("the Younger") is most famous for being Julius Caesar's nemesis.

From the Catos, father and son, [ 11 ] the subsequent jurists traced their succession. Cicero [ 15 ] censures Cato and Brutus for introducing in their published responsa the names of the persons who consulted them. Celsus [ 16 ] cites an opinion of Cato concerning the intercalary month, and the regula or sententia Catoniana is frequently mentioned in the Digest.

The regula Catoniana was a celebrated rule of Roman law to the effect, that a legacy should never be valid unless it would have been valid if the testator had died immediately after he had made his will. He died when praetor designatus, around BC, a few years before his father, who bore his loss with resignation, and, on the ground of poverty, gave him a frugal funeral.

His elder son was the consul of BC, Marcus Cato.