I'm wondering why Marcus Porcius Cato (the Elder, who lived from 234 to 149 B.C.) was such a fierce opponent of Greek culture and ideas. He urged the suppression of the Bacchanalian mysteries, he wanted to send away Greek ambassadors, and he seems to have thought Greeks were degenerate and cowardly. Do we know why he did all this?
And did Cato's anti-Greek campaign fail? Over a century later, the poet Horace wrote that "Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium." That would imply that Cato had little impact in the long run. Is that conclusion accurate?
Scholarship since Astin's (1979?) biography of Cato paints a much more complicated picture of the character than Cato as a hater of Greek culture. Cato wrote a history, after all, which is a fundamentally Greek endevour although he wrote it in Latin. I'm cribbing from Champion's Cultural Politics in Polybius' Histories here. Cato studied with Greeks, read Thucydides and Demosthenes, and had traveled in Greece.
The Bacchanalia thing probably had a large religious component to it, but Livy also reports a fair bit of criminal activity (forging wills, for instance). I may be heterodox in this opinion, but I see the Bacchanalian decree more as shutting down organized crime than religious persecution. Rome managed to incorporate plenty of foreign cults (Juno, Asclepius, Isis, Cybele...). Strictly speaking, the decree didn't ban the worship of Bacchus, so that wasn't the problem. It banned assemblies of groups of worshipers. The decree includes procedures for petitioning for permission to worship. It was the organizational structure of the cult they wanted out, not the religious aspect itself.
EDIT: Here is what Plutarch says about Cato's use of Greek:
his writings are moderately embellished with Greek sentiments and stories, and many literal translations from the Greek have found a place among his maxims and proverbs.
EDIT 2: Here is a direct example of Cato's use of Greek, again from Plutarch's life.
Discoursing on the power of women, he said: "All other men rule their wives; we rule all other men, and our wives rule us." This, however, is a translation from the sayings of Themistocles.
EDIT 3: Here is a passage, again from Plutarch, demonstrating the complicated relationship Cato had to Greece
He also spent much time at Athens. And we are told that a certain speech of his is extant, which he addressed to the Athenian people in Greek, declaring that he admired the virtues of the ancient Athenians, and was glad to behold a city so beautiful and grand as theirs. But this is not true. On the contrary, he dealt with Athenians through an interpreter. He could have spoken to them directly, but he always clung to his native ways, and mocked at those who were lost in admiration of anything that was Greek.
I wish we had more of this philhellene tradition that Plutarch references (only to refute) or know on what evidence Plutarch refutes it. C'est la vie.