Cato the Younger

Having made this agreement, they chose Cato as depositary, umpire, and witness, and bringing their money, offered to deposit it with him; they even drew up their agreement in his presence. Cato took pledges for their money, but would not accept the money itself. When the day appointed for the election came, Cato took his stand by the side of the presiding tribune, and after watching the vote, declared that one of the depositors was playing false, and ordered him to pay his money over to the others.

But these, after admiring and praising Cato’s uprightness, cancelled the penalty, feeling that they already had sufficient satisfaction from the wrong-doer. In the rest of the citizens, however, this conduct of Cato caused more vexation and odium than anything else; they felt that he was investing himself with the powers of senate, courts and magistrates.

For no virtue, by the fame and credit which it gives, creates more envy than justice, because both power and credit follow it chiefly among the common folk.

These do not merely honour the just, as they do the brave, nor admire them merely, as they do the wise, but they actually love the just, and put confidence and trust in them. As for the brave and wise, however, they fear the one and distrust the other; and besides, they think that these excel by a natural gift rather than by their own volition, considering bravery to be a certain intensity, and wisdom a certain vigour, of soul, whereas any one who wishes can be just forthwith, and the greatest disgrace is visited upon injustice, as being inexcusable baseness.

For this reason all the great men were hostile to Cato, feeling that they were put to shame by him; and Pompey, who considered Cato’s high repute as a dissolution of his own power, was always egging certain persons on to abuse him, among whom was Clodius the demagogue especially, who had again drifted into Pompey’s following. He loudly denounced Cato for having appropriated much treasure from Cyprus, and for being hostile to Pompey because he had declined to marry his daughter.

But Cato declared that, without taking a single horse or soldier, he had got together from Cyprus more treasure for the city than Pompey had brought back from all his wars and triumphs after stirring up the habitable world; and that he never chose Pompey for a marriage connection, not because he thought him unworthy of it, but because he saw the difference in their political tenets.