Cato the Younger

And so by exhibiting a treasury which was inaccessible to public informers and free from their taint, but full of money, he taught men that a state can be rich without wronging its citizens. At first some of his colleagues thought him obnoxious and troublesome, but afterwards they were well pleased with him, since he took upon his own shoulders exclusively the burden of the hatreds arising from refusal to give away the public moneys or to make unjust decisions, and furnished them with a defence against people who tried to force requests upon them. They would say, namely, It is impossible; Cato will not consent.

On the last day of his term of office, after he had been escorted to his house by almost the whole body of citizens, he heard that many friends of Marcellus and men of influence had closely beset him in the treasury, and were trying to force him to register some remission of moneys due. Now, Marcellus had been a friend of Cato from boyhood, and when associated with him had been a most excellent magistrate. When acting by himself however, he was led by a feeling of deference to be complaisant towards suppliants, and was inclined to grant every favour.

At once, then, Cato turned back, and when he found that Marcellus had been forced to register the remission, he asked for the tablets and erased the entry, while Marcellus himself stood by and said nothing. After this had been done, Cato conducted Marcellus away from the treasury and brought him to his house, and Marcellus had no word of blame for him either then or afterwards, but continued his intimate friendship up to the end.

However, not even after he had laid down the quaestorship did Cato leave the treasury destitute of his watchful care, but slaves of his were there every day copying the transactions, and he himself paid five talents for books containing accounts of the public business from the times of Sulla down to his own quaestorship, and always had them in hand.

He used to be the first to reach the senate and the last to leave it; and often, while the other senators were slowly assembling, he would sit and read quietly, holding his toga in front of the book. He never left the city when the senate was in session. But afterwards, when Pompey and his friends saw that he could never be prevailed upon or forced from his position in any unjust measures which they had at heart, they would contrive to draw him away by sundry legal advocacies for friends, or arbitrations, or business matters. Accordingly, Cato quickly perceived their design and refused all such applications, and made it a rule to have no other business on hand while the senate was in session.

For it was neither for the sake of reputation, nor to gain riches, nor accidentally and by chance, like some others, that he threw himself into the management of civic affairs, but he chose a public career as the proper task for a good man, and thought that he ought to be more attentive to the common interests than the bee to its honey. And so he was careful to have the affairs of the provinces and decrees and trials and the most important measures sent to him by his connections and friends in every place.