Cato the Younger

However, when the treasure was carried through the forum, the people were amazed at the great amount of it, and the senate in special session voted, together with the appropriate praises, that an extraordinary praetorship should be given to Cato, and then when he witnessed the spectacles he might wear a purple-bordered robe. These honours, now, Cato declined, but he persuaded the senate to bestow freedom upon Nicias, the steward of the royal household, after bearing witness to his care and fidelity.

Philippus, the father of Marcia, was consul at the time, and the dignity and power of his office devolved in a manner upon Cato; the colleague of Philippus, also, bestowed no less honour upon Cato for his virtue than Philippus did because of his relationship to him.

But Cicero had now come back[*](In 57 B.C., after an absence of sixteen months. Cf. the Cicero, chapters xxx.-xxxiii.) from the exile into which he was driven by Clodius, and, relying on his great influence in the senate, had forcibly taken away and destroyed, in the absence of Clodius, the records of his tribuneship which Clodius had deposited on the Capitol. When the senate was convened to consider the matter, and Clodius made his denunciation, Cicero made a speech in which he said that, since Clodius had been made tribune illegally, all that had been done or recorded during his tribunate ought to be void and invalid.

Cato contradicted Cicero while he was speaking, and finally rose and said that, although he was wholly of the opinion that there was nothing sound or good in the administration of Clodius, still, if everything which Clodius had done while tribune were to be rescinded, then all his own proceedings in Cyprus would be rescinded, and his mission there had not been legal, since an illegal magistrate had obtained it for him; but it had not been illegal, he maintained, for Clodius to be elected tribune after a transfer from patrician to plebeian rank which the law allowed,[*](Cf. chapter xxxiii.) and if he had been a bad magistrate, like others, it was fitting to call to an account the man who had done wrong, and not to vitiate the office which had suffered from his wrong doing. In consequence of this speech Cicero was angry with Cato, and for a long time ceased friendly intercourse with him; afterwards, however, they were reconciled.[*](Cf. the Cicero, xxxiv.)

After this, Pompey and Crassus had a meeting with Caesar,[*](At Luca, in 56 B.C. Cf. the Pompey, li.; the Caesar, xxi.) who had come across the Alps, in which they laid a plan to canvass jointly for a second consulship, and, after they were established in the office, to get a vote passed giving to Caesar another term in his command, of the same duration as the first, and to themselves the largest provinces, money and military forces. This was a conspiracy for the division of the supreme power and the abolition of the constitution.