ABSTRACT
Marcus Porcius Cato swept into the Senate house with an almost regal air. The old man was fully aware of the reverence bordering almost on awe with which many of his fellow senators regarded him. He had, after all, held Rome’s highest offices of state, the consulship and the censorship, before many of them were even born. And he was one of the last men alive who had actually fought in the great war against the legendary Hannibal of Carthage. The Senate meeting that day, early in the year 149 BCE, was to consider a proposal to set up a special judicial tribunal (quaestio) to try the ex-governor of western Spain, Servius Sulpicius Galba, for severe malfeasances while in office. Rome’s oldest living senator, a resolute moralist all his life, was firmly in favour of setting up the tribunal, and concluded his speech recommending the measure in the way he had concluded every public utterance for several years now: with the words ‘furthermore, it is my opinion that Carthage should be destroyed’. The proposal was passed by the Senate and forwarded for final decision at a popular assembly meeting, where Galba succeeded in having it defeated by shamelessly playing on the people’s sympathy for his young sons.1 As for Carthage, Rome was already at war with her great north African rival, and its ultimate destruction was assured.
