Politician and Roman writer.

Caton (or the Critic, in Latin Marcus Porcius Cato) knew a brilliant military career at the time of the second Punic War, then like powerful orator of the armies, and questeur of Scipion the African in Sicily (205). It was then named governor of the province of Sardinia.

Elected official consul in 195, it fought in Spain and took part, into 191, with the battle of Thermopyles against Antiochos III. Critic in 184, it was indignant at the decline of traditional manners and fought all the forms of luxury and corruption which had invaded Rome.

He even succeeds in making vote the expulsion of the philosophers, culprits, in his eyes, to propagate an Hellenism which he scorned.

Its obstinacy to recommend to the Roman senate the destruction of Carthage, powerful rival of Rome in the Western Mediterranean, remained legendary. Caton was the author of a Treaty on agriculture and a history of Rome entitled Origines.