Marcus Cato

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.

Well then, Scipio convinced the tribunes that victory in war depended on the preparations made for it; showed that he could be agreeable in his intercourse with his friends when he had leisure for it, but was never led by his sociability to neglect matters of large and serious import; and sailed off for his war in Africa.

The influence which Cato’s oratory won for him waxed great, and men called him a Roman Demosthenes; but his manner of life was even more talked about and noised abroad. For his oratorical ability only set before young men a goal which many already were striving eagerly to attain; but a man who wrought with his own hands, as his fathers did, and was contented with a cold breakfast, a frugal dinner, simple raiment, and a humble dwelling,—one who thought more of not wanting the superfluities of life than of possessing them,—such a man was rare.

The commonwealth had now grown too large to keep its primitive integrity; the sway over many realms and peoples had brought a large admixture of customs, and the adoption of examples set in modes of life of every sort. It was natural, therefore, that men should admire Cato, when they saw that, whereas other men were broken down by toils and enervated by pleasures, he was victor over both,