Marcus Cato

After this, discovering by converse with him that his nature was gentle and polite, and needed, like a growing tree, only cultivation and room to expand, Valerius urged and at last persuaded him to engage in public life at Rome. Accordingly, taking up his abode in the city, his own efforts as an advocate at once won him admiring friends, and the favour of Valerius brought him great honour and influence, so that he was made military tribune first, and then quaestor.

After this, being now launched on an eminent and brilliant career, he shared the highest honours with Valerius, becoming consul with him, and afterwards censor. Of the elder statesmen, he attached himself most closely to Fabius Maximus, who was of the highest reputation and had the greatest influence, but this was more by way of setting before himself the character and life of the man as the fairest examples he could follow.

In the same spirit he did not hesitate to oppose the great Scipio, a youthful rival of Fabius, and thought to be envious of him. When he was sent out with Scipio as quaestor for the war in Africa,[*](204 B.C.) he saw that the man indulged in his wonted extravagance, and lavished money without stint upon his soldiery.

He therefore made bold to tell him that the matter of expense was not the greatest evil to be complained of, but the fact that he was corrupting the native simplicity of his soldiers, who resorted to wanton pleasures when their pay exceeded their actual needs. Scipio replied that he had no use for a parsimonious quaestor when the winds were bearing him under full sail to the war; he owed the city an account of his achievements, not of its moneys.

Cato therefore left Sicily, and joined Fabius in denouncing before the Senate Scipio’s waste of enormous moneys, and his boyish addiction to palaestras and theatres, as though he were not commander of an army, but master of a festival. As a result of these attacks, tribunes were sent to bring Scipio back to Rome, if the charges against him should turn out to be true.