Origines is the title of a historical work by Marcus Porcius Cato, commonly known as Cato the Elder

Cato the Elder

Marcus Porcius Cato was a Roman statesman, commonly referred to as Censorius , Sapiens , Priscus , or Major, Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor, to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger.He came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some...

. Origines no longer survives as a complete text, but substantial fragments are known because they were quoted by later Latin authors.

This highly original work was the first prose history in Latin

Latin literature

Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...

, and among the very first Latin prose works in any genre. Along with Livius Andronicus

Livius Andronicus

Lucius Livius Andronicus , not to be confused with the later historian Livy, was a Greco-Roman dramatist and epic poet of the Old Latin period. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family at Rome by translating Greek works into Latin, including Homer’s Odyssey. They were meant at...

, Naevius

Gnaeus Naevius

Gnaeus Naevius was a Roman epic poet and dramatist of the Old Latin period. He had a notable literary career at Rome until his satiric comments delivered in comedy angered the Metelli family, one of whom was consul. After a sojourn in prison he recanted and was set free by the tribunes...

, Ennius

Ennius

Quintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent...

 and Plautus

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...

, Cato helped to found a new literature.

According to Cato's biographer Cornelius Nepos

Cornelius Nepos

Cornelius Nepos was a Roman biographer. He was born at Hostilia, a village in Cisalpine Gaul not far from Verona. His Gallic origin is attested by Ausonius, and Pliny the Elder calls him Padi accola...

, the Origines consisted of "seven books. Book I is the history of the early kings of Rome; books II and III the beginnings of each Italian city. This seems to be why the whole work is called Origines." The city histories in books II and III of the work were apparently treated on an individual basis, drawing on their own local traditions. The last four books dealt with Rome's later wars and the growth in the city's power; they "outweighed the rest", according to one later reader.

There were two existing historical works in Latin, by Naevius

Naevius

-People:* Gnaeus Naevius, poet and dramatist 3rd century BC* Naevius Sutorius Macro, praetorian prefect under Tiberius and Caligula...

 and Ennius, but they were in verse, not prose. There were two existing prose histories by Romans, Q. Fabius Pictor and Lucius Cincius Alimentus

Lucius Cincius Alimentus

Lucius Cincius Alimentus was a celebrated Roman annalist and jurist, who was praetor in Sicily in 209 BC, with the command of two legions. He wrote principally in Greek. He and Fabius Pictor are considered the first two Roman historians, though both wrote in Greek as a more conventionally...

, but they were written in Greek. All four of these existing works focused on Rome throughout; moreover, the two poems wove Roman history inextricably into the adventures of the Graeco-Roman gods. In Origines, Cato evidently chose to do it differently. He felt no need to follow precedent, Roman or otherwise:



Cato's own achievements were not downplayed: he was "not the man to minimize his own achievements". The Origines included several of his own speeches verbatim. He made it a rule not to mention military commanders by name, yet the surviving fragments give the impression that Cato's campaigns were highlighted.