In looking after the property and income of the state Cato followed the same principles he had acted on in Spain. He reduced the expenditure on public works as far as possible, and took care to sell at the full price the right to collect the revenue. Encroachments on the property of the nation were severely punished. Not by acts only, but by constant speeches, full at once of grimness and humor, did Cato struggle against the degeneracy of his time[45]. He concluded his period of office with a self-laudatory harangue, and assumed the title _Censorius_, while his statue was placed in the temple of the goddess Salus with an inscription affirming that he had reformed the Roman nation. But in a very brief time all trace of Cato's activity as censor was swept away, except that afforded by the numerous life-long quarrels in which he had involved himself[46]. In less than two years one of his victims, Purpurio, was employed by the senate on a high political mission, while another, L. Flamininus, sat among the senators at the games in defiance of Cato's sentence. Yet Cato remained by far the most powerful member of the senate. Titus Flamininus, his only important rival, quickly passed out of notice. So far as there was any democratic opposition to the senatorial oligarchy, Cato was the leader of that opposition for the remainder of his life. But at that period no great political movements agitated the state within; nearly the whole interest of the time was centred in the foreign relations of Rome. On matters of foreign policy Cato offered but little opposition to the prevailing tendencies of the age, though on particular occasions he exercised great influence. But his voice was at all times loudly heard on all questions of morality and public order. He supported the _lex Furia_ and the _lex Voconia_, the object of which was to prevent the dissipation of family property, and the _lex Orchia_, directed against extravagant expenditure on feasts, also the _lex Baebia de ambitu_, the first serious attempt to check bribery. We hear also that Cato bitterly attacked Lepidus, censor in 180, for erecting a permanent theatre in place of the movable booths before used. The building was actually pulled down. We are told that from time to time he denounced the misdoings of provincial governors. In 171 he was one of a commission of five for bringing to justice three ex-praetors who had practised all manner of corruption in Spain. Almost the last act of his life was to prosecute Galba for cruel misgovernment of the Lusitanians. The titles of Cato's speeches show that he played a great part in the deliberations of the senate concerning foreign affairs, but as his fighting days were over and he was unfitted for diplomacy, we have little explicit evidence of his activity in this direction. At the end of the third Macedonian war he successfully opposed the annexation of Macedonia. He also saved from destruction the Rhodians,