Cato's Praecepta ad filium, a self-tutorial encyclopedia conceived to develop skills and knowledge in practical fields and published about 183 BCE, reflects Roman pragmatism.

Cato is also opposed to the spread of Hellenic culture, which he believes threatened to destroy the rugged simplicity of the conventional Roman type.

It is in the discharge of the censorship that this determination is most strongly exhibited, and hence that he derives the title (the Censor) by which he is most generally distinguished.

He revises with unsparing severity the lists of senators and knights, ejecting from either order the men whom he judges unworthy of it, either on moral grounds or from their want of the prescribed means.

One example of his rigid justice is the expulsion in 184 BCE of Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, Roman Consul in 192 and brother to the great Titus Quinctius Flamininus, the conquerer of Greece, for wanton cruelty.

Flamininus's removal from the Senate is a part of a bigger struggle between the party of the Scipios and their opponents led by Cato.

If he is not personally engaged in the prosecution of the Scipiones (Africanus and Asiaticus) for corruption, it is his spirit that animates the attack upon them.

Even Scipio Africanus, who refuses to reply to the charge, saying only, "Romans, this is the day on which I conquered Hannibal," and is absolved by acclamation, finds it necessary to retire, self-banished, to his villa at Liternum, where, ill and disillusioned, he dies in 183.

Cato's enmity dates from the African campaign when he had quarreled with Scipio for his lavish distribution of the spoil among the troops, and his general luxury and extravagance.