Marcus Cato

Heaven forbid I my son, cried Cato, all your conduct towards me has been admirable, and I have no fault to find with you; but I desire to bless myself and my country with more such sons. However, they say that this sentiment was uttered long before by Peisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, who gave his grown up sans a step-mother in the person of Timonassa of Argolis, by whom he is said to have had Iophon and Thessalus.

Of this second marriage a son was born to Cato, who was named Salonius, after his mother’s father. But his elder son died in the praetorship. Cato often speaks of him in his books as a brave and worthy man, and is said to have borne his loss with all the equanimity of a philosopher, remitting not a whit because of it his ardour in the public service.

For he was not, like Lucius Lucullus and Metellus Pius in after times, too enfeebled by old age to serve the people, regarding the service of the state as a burdensome duty; nor did he, like Scipio Africanus before him, because of envious attacks upon his reputation, turn his back upon the people and make leisure his end and aim for the rest of his life;

but rather, as someone persuaded Dionysius to regard his sovereignty as his fairest winding-sheet, so he held public service to be the fairest privilege of old age. For recreation and amusement, when he had leisure therefor, he resorted to the writing of books and to farming.