Not long after the time of Ennius, whom we rightly reckon among the Roman historians, Roman history began to be written in Latin prose; and the first work of this kind was the most important which has ever been composed on the history of ancient Italy, viz. the Origines of the elder Cato. They show that Cato had indeed found out the only right way of treating Roman history. He wrote not the history of the Romans only, but also that of Italy. As he described the widening the Roman sway in Italy, he seems to have told the history of each Italic people separately. We know from Nepos the plan of his seven books. In the first, there was the history of the kings; in the second and third, the subjugation of Italy; in the fourth book, the first, and in the fifth, the second Punic war; in the sixth and seventh, the later wars down to the time with which he concluded. Cato was a great man in every respect, he rose far above his age. Of his work we have many detached quotations; but of real extracts we have only one in Gellius, viz. the passage of the Tribune Q. Cædicius, which is from the second Punic war, and consequently belongs to the fourth book. It shows Cato’s peculiar manner of writing; and we understand from it why Cicero, who on the whole vacillates between praise and censure with regard to Cato, distinguishes him above all his contemporaries. He wrote about the year 600. In Livy there is a strange anachronism in the discussions about the _lex Oppia_, when, in the year 561, the tribune cites against Cato his Origines. But so slavish was formerly the belief in Livy, that the most positive information was less considered than that passage. Gerh. Jo. Vossius is the first who points out that Livy was here most likely rather speaking himself. What we have from the work of Cato is unfortunately very little, but all of it excellent. This book and that of Fabius are by far the most important accounts which we might wish for Roman history. His work stands alone in the whole collection of Roman annals.