Marcus Cato

We are also told that a certain young man, who had got a verdict of civil outlawry against an enemy of his dead father, was passing through the forum on the conclusion of the case, and met Cato, who greeted him and said: These are the sacrifices we must bring to the spirits of our parents; not lambs and kids, but the condemnations and tears of their enemies. However, he himself did not go unscathed, but wherever in his political career he gave his enemies the slightest handle, he was all the while suffering prosecutions and running risk of condemnation.

It is said that he was defendant in nearly fifty cases, and in the last one when he was eighty-six years of age. It was in the course of this that he uttered the memorable saying: It is hard for one who has lived among men of one generation, to make his defence before those of another. And even with this case he did not put an end to his forensic contests, but four years later, at the age of ninety, he impeached Servius Galba.

Indeed, it may be said, like Nestor, to have been vigorous and active among three generations. For after many political struggles with Scipio the Great, as told above, he lived to be contemporary with Scipio the Younger, who was the Elder’s grandson by adoption, and the son of that Paulus Aemilius who subdued Perseus and the Macedonians.[*](In the battle of Pydna, 168 B.C.)

Ten years after his consulship,[*](184 B.C.) Cato stood for the censorship. This office towered, as it were, above every other civic honour, and was, in a way, the culmination of a political career. The variety of its powers was great, including that of examining into the lives and manners of the citizens. Its creators thought that no one should be left to his own devices and desires, without inspection and review, either in his marrying, or in the begetting of his children, or in the ordering of his daily life, or in the entertainment of his friends.