time and Lucullus were subduing in
their campaigns.

XI. While Cato was still engaged in the service, his brother, who was
on his road to Asia, fell sick at AEnus,[673] in Thrace; and a letter
immediately came to Cato, and though the sea was very stormy, and
there was no vessel at hand of sufficient size, taking only two
friends with him and three slaves, he set sail from Thessalonike in a
small trading ship. After narrowly escaping being drowned at sea, he
was saved by unexpected good luck, but he found Caepio already dead. He
was considered to have borne the misfortune with more of passion than
philosophy, not only in his lamentations and his embracings of the
dead body and the heaviness of his grief, but also in his expenditure
about the interment, and the trouble that he took about fragrant
spices and costly vests which were burnt with the body, and a monument
of polished Thasian stone of the cost of eight talents which was
constructed in the Agora of AEnus. These things there were some who
found fault with by comparison with Cato's freedom from all display in
other matters, not seeing how much mildness and affection there was in
the man who was inflexible and firm against pleasures and fears and
shameless entreaties. For the celebration of the funeral both cities
and princes offered to send him many things to do honour to the dead,
from none of whom however would he receive valuables, but he accepted
fragrant spices and vests, paying the price to those who sent the
things. Though the succession came to him and the young daughter of
Caepio, he did not claim back in the division of the property any thing
that he had expended about the funeral. And though he did such things
as these and continued to do such, there was one[674] who wrote, that
he passed the ashes of the dead through a sieve and sifted them to
search for the gold that was burnt. So far did the writer allow, not
to his sword only, but also to his stilus, irresponsibility and
exemption from all account.

XII. When the time of Cato's service was at an end, he was attended on
his departure, not with good wishes, which is usual, nor yet with
praises, but with tears and never-satisfied embraces, the soldiers
placing their garments under his feet on the way by which he went and
kissing his hands, which the Romans of that day hardly ever did to any
of their Imperators. As he wished, before engaging in public affairs,
at the same time to travel about to make h