Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
borne the title of king, according to Cato, were to be compared with
Epameinondas, or Perikles, or Themistokles, or with Manius Curius or
Hamilcar Barcas. He used to say that his enemies hated him because he
began his day's work while it was still dark, and because he neglected
his own affairs to attend to those of the public. He also was wont to
say that he had rather his good actions should go unrewarded than that
his bad ones should be unpunished; and that he pardoned all who did
wrong except himself.
IX. When the Romans sent three ambassadors to Bithynia, one of whom
was crippled by the gout, another had been trepanned and had a piece
taken out of his head, and the third was thought to be a simpleton,
Cato remarked that the Romans had sent an embassy which had neither
feet, head, nor heart. When, for the sake of Polybius the historian,
Scipio entreated Cato to exert his influence on behalf of the Achæan
exiles, after a long debate in the Senate, where some advised that
they should be sent back to their own country, and some that they
should still be detained at Rome, he got up and said, "Have we nothing
better to do than to sit all day discussing whether a parcel of old
Greeks shall be buried here or in Achaia?" A few days after the Senate
had decreed the restoration of the exiles, Polybius proposed to make
another application, that they should be restored to all the offices
which they formerly held in Achaia. He asked Cato whether he thought
that he should succeed in this second appeal to the Senate; to which
Cato answered with a smile, that he was imitating Ulysses, when he
returned again into the cave of the Cyclops to fetch the hat and
girdle which he had left behind and forgotten. He said that wise men
gained more advantage from fools, than fools from wise men; for the
wise men avoid the errors of fools, but fools cannot imitate the
example of wise men. He said that he loved young men to have red
cheeks rather than pale ones, and that he did not care for a soldier
who used his hands while he marched and his feet while he fought, or
one who snored louder in bed than he shouted in battle. When
reproaching a very fat man he said, "How can this man's body be useful
to his country, when all parts between the neck and the groin are
possessed by the belly?" Once when an epicure wished to become his
friend, he said that he could not live with a man whose palate was
more sensitive than his heart. He said also that the soul of a lover
inhabits the body of his beloved. He himself tells us, that in his
whole life he repented of three things only:--First, that he had
trusted a woman with a secret. Secondly, that he had gone by water
when he might have gone by land. Thirdly, that he had passed one day
without having made his will. To an old man who was acting wrongly he
said, "My good sir, old age is ugly enough without your adding the
deformity of wickedness to it." When a certain tribune, who was
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