For about one thousand years the Distichs of Cato were the first Latin text of every student
across Europe and latterly the New World. Chaucer Cervantes and Shakespeare assumed their
audiences knew them well-and they almost certainly did. Yet most Classicists today have either
never heard of them or mistakenly attribute them to Cato the Elder. The Distichs are a
collection of approximately 150 two-line maxims in hexameters that offer instructions about or
reflections on topics such as friendship money reputation justice and self-control. Wisdom
from Rome argues that Classicists (and others) should read the Distichs: they provide important
insights into the ancient Roman literate masses' conceptions of society and their views of
relationships between the individual family community and state. Newly dated to the first
century CE they are an important addition and often corrective to more familiar contemporary
texts that treat the same topics. Moreover as the field of Classics increasingly acknowledges
the intellectual importance of exploring the reception of Classical texts an introduction to
one of the most widely read ancient texts for many centuries is timely and important.
