of an
accomplished general than precipitancy and rashness; on which account he
had frequently in his mouth those proverbs:

Speude bradeos,
Hasten slowly,

And

'Asphalaes gar est' ameinon, hae erasus strataelataes.
The cautious captain's better than the bold.

And "That is done fast enough, which is done well enough."

He was wont to say also, that "a battle or a war ought never to be
undertaken, unless the prospect of gain overbalanced the fear of loss.
For," said he, "men who pursue small advantages with no small hazard,
resemble those who fish with a golden hook, the loss of which, if the
line should happen to break, could never be compensated by all the fish
they might take."

XXVI. He was advanced to public offices before the age at which he was
legally qualified for them; and to some, also, of a new kind, and for
life. He seized the consulship in the twentieth year of his age,
quartering his legions in a threatening manner near the city, and sending
deputies to demand it for him in the name of the army. When the senate
demurred, (89) a centurion, named Cornelius, who was at the head of the
chief deputation, throwing back his cloak, and shewing the hilt of his
sword, had the presumption to say in the senate-house, "This will make
him consul, if ye will not." His second consulship he filled nine years
afterwards; his third, after the interval of only one year, and held the
same office every year successively until the eleventh. From this
period, although the consulship was frequently offered him, he always
declined it, until, after a long interval, not less than seventeen years,
he voluntarily stood for the twelfth, and two years after that, for a
thirteenth; that he might successively introduce into the forum, on their
entering public life, his two sons, Caius and Lucius, while he was
invested with the highest office in the state. In his five consulships
from the sixth to the eleventh, he continued in office throughout the
year; but in the rest, during only nine, six, four, or three months, and
in his second no more than a few hours. For having sat for a short time
in the morning, upon the calends of January [1st January], in his curule
chair [143], before the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, he abdicated the
office, and substituted another in his room. Nor did he enter upon them
all at Rome, but upon the fourth in Asia, the fifth in the Isle of Samos,
and the eighth and ninth at Tar