Indeed, Cato's activity in literature probably had for its chief end and aim to resist the incoming tide of Greek philosophy and of refinement generally; he is the very type of Horace's "laudator temporis acti," "the eulogist of a bygone time": that crude heroic time when Dentatus, hero of three triumphs, ate boiled turnips in his chimney-corner, and had no use for Macedonian gold. Whether there was any important mass of ballads or other purely national Roman or Latin literature in that elder day has been much debated. The general voice of scholars is against Niebuhr and Macaulay. There is every indication that the practical, unimaginative Latin plowmen and spearsmen received the very alphabet of every art from vanquished Hellas. Much of this same debate has turned on a fragment from Cato. Cicero reports:--"In his 'Origines' Cato said that it had been a custom of the forefathers, for those who reclined at banquet to sing to the flute the praises and merits of illustrious heroes." The combination of conviviality and song in this passage tempts us to connect it with the scornful words from Cato's own 'Carmen,' already cited! Cato was half right, no doubt. The simple charm and vigor of rustic Latium were threatened; Greek vice and Oriental luxury were dangerous gifts: but his resistance was as hopeless as Canute's protest to the encroaching waves. That this resistance was offered even to the great Greek literature itself, is unquestionable. "I will speak of those Greeks in a suitable place, son Marcus, telling what I learned at Athens, and what benefit it is to look into their books,--not to master them. I shall prove them a most worthless and unteachable (!) race. Believe that this is uttered by a prophet: whenever that folk imparts its literature, it will corrupt everything." The harsh, narrow, intolerant nature of Cato is as remote as could well be from the scholarly or literary temper. Even his respectful biographer Plutarch bursts out with indignant protest against the thrifty advice to sell off slaves who had grown old in service. Indeed, most of Cato's sayings remind us of some canny old Scot, or--it may be politer to say--of a hard-headed Yankee farmer, living out the precepts of Poor Richard's philosophy. "Grip the subject: words will follow," is his chief contribution to rhetoric. Another has, it must be confessed, more of Quintilian's flavor: "An orator, son Marcus, is a good man skilled in speaking." He is most at home however upon his farm, preaching such familiar economies as "Buy not what you need, but what you must have: what you do not need is dear at a penny." The nearest approach to wit is but a sarcastic consciousness of human weakness, like the maxim "Praise large farms, but till a small one"; the form of which, by the way, is strikingly like the advice given long before by a kindred spirit, the Ascræan farmer Hesiod:--