quality:correction, quality:corruption
Follower of the old Roman strictness

In the area surrounding Cato's Sabine farm were the lands of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, a young nobleman of significant influence and high patrician family. Flaccus could not help remarking on Cato's energy, his military talent, his eloquence, his frugal and simple life, and his traditional principles. Flaccus himself was a member of that purist patrician faction which displayed its adherence to the stricter virtues of the Roman character.

Within Roman society a transition was in progress—from Samnite rusticity to Grecian civilization and oriental luxuriance. The chief magistracies of the state had become almost hereditary for a few wealthy and upper-class families. They were popular by acts of generosity and charming manners, and they collected material wealth from their clients and followers, as well as intellectual prowess provided by their education, taste in the fine arts, and knowledge of literature.

Nonetheless, the less fortunate nobles, envious of this exclusive oligarchy and critical of the decadence and luxury, formed a party with a more conservative and ascetic ideology. In their eyes, rusticity and austerity were the marks of Sabine character, and of the old Roman inflexible integrity and love of order. Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Scipio Africanus and his family, and Titus Quinctius Flamininus may be taken as representative of the new culture; Cato's friends, Fabius and Flaccus, were the leading men in the faction defending the old plainness.