who during the war had plainly desired the victory of Perseus, and in the early days, when the Roman commanders had ill success, had deeply wounded the whole Roman nation by an offer to mediate between them and the king of Macedon. Cato had all his life retained his feeling of enmity to the Carthaginians, whom Scipio, he thought, had treated too tenderly. In 150 he was one of an embassy sent to Carthage, and came back filled with alarm at the prosperity of the city. It is said that whatever was the subject on which he was asked for his opinion in the senate, he always ended his speech with '_ceterum censeo delendam esse Carthaginem_' P. Scipio Nasica, the son-in-law of Africanus, and the representative of his policy, always shouted out the opposite opinion, thinking that the fear of Carthage had a salutary effect on the Roman populace at large. But the ideas of Cato prevailed, and a cruel policy, carried out with needless brutality, led to the extinction of Rome's greatest rival. Cato did not live to see the conclusion of the war; he died in 149, at the age of 84 or 85 years, having retained his mental and physical vigor to the last. He had two sons, one by his first wife, and one by his second wife, born when Cato was 80 years of age. The elder son, to whom many of Cato's works were addressed, died as praetor-elect, before his father[47]. The other was grandfather of Cato Uticensis. The literary activity of the old censor was great, though his leisure was small.[48] In Cicero's time a collection of 150 speeches was still extant. The titles of about 90 are still known to us, and of some we possess a few fragments. Cato's greatest work, however, was his _Origines_, the first real historical work written in Latin. His predecessors had been merely compilers of chronicles. The work was founded on laborious investigations, and comprised the history of Rome from the earliest times perhaps down to 150 B.C.[49], as well as notices of the history of other important Italian states. Further, Cato wrote of Agriculture, to which he was enthusiastically devoted. We still have his _De Re Rustica_, a collection of maxims loosely strung together. He also composed works on law; a sort of educational encyclopaedia for his son; and a collection of witty sayings, Αποφθεγματα, drawn from Greek as well as from Roman sources. Plutarch seems to have known a collected edition of the pungent and proverbial utterances for which the censor was famous, and for which (not for any knowledge of philosophy[50]) he received the title of _sapiens_ ('shrewd') which he bore at the end of his life. This edition, however, was not compiled by Cato himself.