Cato the Elder Urges Carthage's Destruction

Words can be weapons. As Carthage rebuilt its markets and sent annual payments north, Marcus Porcius Cato, Rome’s censor and moralist, grew alarmed—not by Carthaginian armies, which the treaty had stifled, but by Carthaginian prosperity. He cultivated a simple, memorable cadence to reframe the city in senators’ minds [3]. Plutarch paraphrases the sentiment: Carthage should no longer exist. Cato was said to end speeches, no matter the topic, with this refrain. The technique mattered as much as the content. He turned every deliberation into a reminder that across the sea at Carthage’s cothon, ships loaded with purple-dyed cloth and grain slid out under an African sun [3]. Cato had seen Africa. He reportedly brought back a fresh fig to show how short the voyage was from Africa to Rome—a sensory proof: the color of the fruit, the feel of the skin, the distance counted in days. The Senate chamber filled with the sound of debate and the soft rhythm of persuasion. His rhetoric met fertile ground because Masinissa’s pressure and Carthage’s petitions kept the city’s name on the agenda. Each arbitration request became a chance to repeat the line. Each report of new building in Carthage—storehouses, walls, quays—became evidence that wealth meant danger. Cato did not alone cause war. But he built the argument that made war a solution rather than a scandal. When Oroscopa supplied the legal trigger, the chorus had its cue.