(1.) _Cato._ M. Porcius Cato was born in 234 B.C.[29] at the ancient Latin town of Tusculum. Little is known of his family except that it was plebeian, and possessed a small patrimony in the territory of the Sabines, close to the farm of M'. Curius Dentatus, one of Cato's great heroes and models. The heads of the family, so far as memory extended, had distinguished themselves as tough warriors and hardy farmers. Among the Sabines, who even down to the times of the Empire were famed for simplicity of manners and the practice of all the sterner virtues, Cato passed those portions of his life which were not occupied with business of state. From his earliest days he toiled in his own fields, and contented himself with the hardest rustic life.[30] Yet even in his boyhood Cato must have passed intervals at Rome, and seen something of the great statesmen and generals of the time.[31] He seems to have received when young as thorough an education as was possible without learning Greek, such an education as was to be obtained only in the capital. He grew up to manhood in the comparatively quiet period between the first and the second Punic wars; the most exciting event of his younger years must have been the destruction at Clastidium of the vast hordes of Celts who had swept over the northern half of Italy, almost within reach of Rome. Cato was of the age for military service about the time of the battle of Lake Trasimenus, and entered the army then as a common soldier.[32] The first expedition in which he is definitely said to have taken part is that of Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator against Hannibal in Campania, in 214.[33] This Roman commander was a man entirely after Cato's heart, and became one of his models in public life. Before and during the early years of his soldier's life, Cato succeeded in winning some reputation as an orator, having practised first in the provincial courts near his home, and afterwards at Rome.[34] This reputation as well as his great force of character procured for him a powerful life-long friend and patron, M. Valerius Flaccus, a statesman of the old Roman conservative-democratic school of politics, the leader of which was Fabius Cunctator. Through the influence of Flaccus, possibly with the aid of Fabius, Cato became military tribune, and served with that rank under Marcellus in Sicily, under Fabius again at the capture of Tarentum in 209,[35] and under C. Claudius Nero at the battle of the Metaurus, where he contributed materially to that great victory.