his house by almost all the citizens, he heard
that many who were intimate with Marcellus,[682] and men of influence,
had fallen upon him at the treasury and having got round him were
forcing him to sign a certain payment of money that was due. Marcellus
from his boyhood had been a friend of Cato and together with him had
been a most excellent magistrate, but by himself he was easily led by
others through false shame, and was ready to oblige any body.
Accordingly Cato immediately returned to the treasury, and finding
that Marcellus had been prevailed upon to sign the payment asked for
the tablets and erased what was written, while Marcellus stood by and
said not a word. Having done this Cato conducted him down from the
treasury and put him in his house; and Marcellus neither then nor
afterwards found fault with Cato, but continued on intimate terms with
him all along. Nor did Cato when he had quitted the treasury leave it
destitute of protection, but slaves of his were there daily who copied
out the transactions, and he himself purchased for five talents books
which contained the public accounts from the times of Sulla to his own
quaestorship, and he always had them in his hands.

XIX. He used to go into the Senate house the first, and he was the
last to come away; and often while the rest were slowly assembling, he
would sit and read quietly, holding his toga before the book. He never
went abroad when there was to be a meeting of the Senate; but
afterwards when Pompeius saw that Cato could not be prevailed upon,
and could never be brought to comply with the unjust measures on which
he was intent, he used to contrive to engage him in giving his aid to
some friend in a matter before the courts, or in arbitrations, or in
discharging some business. But Cato quickly perceiving his design,
refused all such engagements and made it a rule to do nothing else
while the Senate was assembled. For it was neither for the sake of
reputation, nor self-aggrandisement, nor by a kind of spontaneous
movement, nor by chance, like some others, that he was thrown into the
management of state affairs, but he selected a public career as the
proper labour of a good man, and thought that he ought to attend to
public concerns more than the bee to its cells, inasmuch as he made it
his business to have the affairs of the provinces and decrees and
trials and the most important measures communicated to him by his
connections and friends in every pla