For many reasons, Cato "the Censor" can hardly be wholly ignored in any adequate general view of literature. If we look to the chance of survival as a test of vitality, his practical and juiceless book on Agriculture is the oldest volume of Latin prose extant; though we can hardly speak of it as still existing in the form given it by Cato. It appears to have been cruelly "modernized" in outward form about the time of Augustus. Again, the sturdy old supporter of Roman simplicity was the first Italian to publish a collection of orations. A hundred and fifty speeches were known to Cicero. Fragments of eighty still survive; though in many cases they are represented merely by citations given incidentally by some late grammarian, to prove the existence of some rare word or antiquated form. Again, the 'Origines' of Cato would not only have afforded us, if preserved, welcome light upon the beginnings of Rome and many other Italian cities, but a political and military history, brought down to Cato's own day, and especially valuable for its fearless treatment of recent events. Indeed, his own actual speeches were taken up into the history, and one of them, as partly preserved by Aulus Gellius, furnishes the best example we have of the straightforward unadorned oratory of early Rome. There is reason to believe, even, that Cato left what we may fairly call an encyclopædia,--dedicated to, and compiled for, his son. At any rate, he wrote largely--not to mention works already alluded to--on eloquence, medicine, the military art, etc. Yet it must be confessed that Cato illustrates, as strikingly as any figure that could be selected, how little at home the true literary artist would have found himself in early Latium, if a perverse fate had made it possible for him to be born there, or to stray thither, at all. Even his figure and face were repellent enough to stand between Socrates and Samuel Johnson, as the most familiar ugly old men upon the stage of the world's life. "Porcius, fiery-haired, gray-eyed, and snarling at all men,--" says the unforgiving satirist, is unwelcome even when dead, to Persephone in Hades! No authentic portrait-statue of him exists. Indeed these Roman busts and figures, especially in the earlier time, were the work of Greek artists, and the likelihood of his giving a sitting to one of that race is exceedingly small. The only work of Cato's which from its title might seem to have had a poetic form was the 'Carmen de Moribus.' It seems to have been a eulogy upon old Roman simplicity. Not only are the extant fragments in prosaic prose, but the most famous of them declares, with evident regret over his own gentler days of degeneracy: "Their custom was to be dressed in public respectably, at home so much as was needful. They paid more for horses than for cooks. The poet's art was in no honor. _If a man was devoted to it_, or applied himself to conviviality, _he was called a vagabond_!"