Marcus Cato

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.

Nay, rather, thinking that these things revealed a man’s real character more than did his public and political career, they set men in office to watch, admonish, and chastise, that no one should turn aside to wantonness and forsake his native and customary mode of life. They chose to this office one of the so-called patricians, and one of the plebeians. These officers were called censors, and they had authority to degrade a knight, or to expel a senator who led an unbridled and disorderly life.

They also revised the assessments of property, and arranged the citizens in lists according to their social and political classes. There were other great powers also connected with the office. Therefore, when Cato stood for it, nearly all the best known and most influential men of the senatorial party united to oppose him. The men of noble parentage among them were moved by jealousy, thinking that nobility of birth would be trampled in the mire if men of ignoble origin forced their way up to the summits of honour and power;

while those who were conscious of base practices and of a departure from ancestral customs, feared the severity of the man, which was sure to be harsh and inexorable in the exercise of power. Therefore, after due consultation and preparation, they put up in opposition to Cato seven candidates for the office, who sought the favour of the multitude with promises of mild conduct in office, supposing, forsooth, that it wanted to be ruled with a lax and indulgent hand.

Cato, on the contrary, showed no complaisance whatever, but plainly threatened wrong-doers in his speeches, and loudly cried that the city had need of a great purification. He adjured the people, if they were wise, not to choose the most agreeable physician, but the one who was most in earnest. He himself, he said, was such a physician, and so was Valerius Flaccus, of the patricians. With him as colleague, and him alone, he thought he could cut and sear to some purpose the hydra-like luxury and effeminacy of the time. As for the rest of the candidates, he saw that they were all trying to force their way into the office in order to administer it badly, since they feared those who would administer it well.

And so truly great was the Roman people, and so worthy of great leaders, that they did not fear Cato’s rigour and haughty independence, but rejected rather those agreeable candidates who, it was believed, would do every thing to please them, and elected Flaccus to the office along with Cato.[*](184 B.C.) To Cato they gave ear, not as to one soliciting office, but as to one already in office and issuing his decrees.