He was taught to ride, swim, wrestle, fence, and, perhaps to the injury of a weak constitution, was exposed to vicissitudes of cold and heat in order to harden his frame.
His father would not allow his learned slave Chilo to superintend the education of his son, lest the boy should acquire slavish notions or habits, but wrote lessons of history for him in large letters with his own hand, and afterwards composed a kind of Encyclopaedia for his use.
Apollinaris Sulpicius, in that passage of Aulus Gellius[12] which is the principal authority with respect to the genealogy of the Cato family, speaks of the son as having written “egregios de juris disciplina libros”.
From the manner in which Cato is mentioned in the Institutes,[18]—“Apud Catonem bene scriptum refert antiquitas,”—it may be inferred, that he was known only at second hand in the time of Justinian.
He died when praetor designatus, around 152 BC, a few years before his father, who bore his loss with resignation, and, on the ground of poverty, gave him a frugal funeral.