Cato the Younger

Appointed military tribune,[*](About 67 B.C.) he was sent to Macedonia, to serve under Rubrius the praetor. At this time, we are told, his wife being full of grief and in tears, one of Cato’s friends, Munatius, said to her: Take heart, Atilia; I will watch over thy husband. Certainly he will, cried Cato, and after they had gone a day’s journey on their way, immediately after supper, he said: Come, Munatius, see that you keep your promise to Atilia, and forsake me neither by day nor by night.

Then he gave orders that two couches be placed in the same chamber for them, and thus Munatius always slept—and that was the joke—watched over by Cato.

He had in his following fifteen slaves, two freedmen, and four friends. These rode on horses, while he himself always went a-foot; and yet he would join each of them in turn and converse with him.[*](Cf. chapter v. 3.) And when he reached the camp, where there were several legions, and was appointed to the command of one of them by the general, he thought it a trifling and useless task to make a display of his own virtue, which was that of a single man, but was ambitious above all things to make the men under his command like unto himself.