It didn’t matter whether he was discussing finances, war, or women’s dress sizes, the Roman senator Cato the Elder would end every speech with the words:

“Carthage must be destroyed”.

To someone unfamiliar with practical politics, this repetition of a consistent message may seem obsessive.

If you believe that, then this article will go over your head.

In any case, Carthage WAS destroyed, and a terrible curse was laid on its ruins that nobody should ever dwell there again.

…Now, this episode of history contains things that will be instantly appreciable to a BUGSER.

-Cato’s phrase “Carthage must be destroyed” was a meme. It was simple, repeatable, and people remembered it.

-Furthermore, Cato understood the power of the METAPHOR and the VISUAL. Returning from a state visit in Carthage, Cato had brought back with him a Carthaginian fig. He held the fig before the Roman Senate and stated that the fig was still good to eat after just a few days at sea. Thus he emphasized how close Carthage was to Rome and how immediate Carthage’s power.

-Cato made at least an OUTWARD show of being a patriot. And so he was recorded by his fellow senatorial historians: as a Roman patriot. (No surprise.) But on a deeper level, Cato undermined the bedrock of the Roman people: the farmers. Cato even wrote a book on how to buy up land and have vast slave gangs work it. And so it was that this scrupleless businessman was turning the Italian countryside into slave-estates, effectively driving Roman families from their land and bringing civil wars and Roman genocide.

-Cato became the most powerful Roman senator, gaining the title of “Censor” (the origin of our word “censorship”)… But despite his power, Cato could not make effective sumptuary laws (legislation on luxury). He tried to prescribe what women could and couldn’t wear. (For similarly comic “law-giving” you can look up Bob’s articles on Prohibition: “Are Politics Sober” & “Liquor Law Again”.) There were protests in the streets of Rome and Cato and his supporters backed down. So Cato COULD influence the destruction of a foreign power, but he FAILED to influence the size of women’s dresses!

-Now as to the fall of Carthage, that happened in such an emphatic fashion that legend has it the Romans strewed the ruins with salt. A terrible oath was made that nobody should dwell there again upon pain of death. So the sentiment THEN was extreme. But there was no CONTINUING incentive. And so, a century later, a similarly ruthless politician, Julius Caesar, allowed people to be settled there……

So regardless of how effective a meme is and how final the victory, it is not enough. Unless there is a CONTINUING program to maintain it.

We have not yet begun to fight.