ictories, and
claimed a triumph. In 190 Cato attacked with success the proposal to grant
a triumph to Q. Minucius Thermus, who had already triumphed over the
Spaniards as praetor, and after his consulship in 193 had fought against
the Ligurians. Cato's next victim was his former commander M'. Acilius
Glabrio, who came forward at the same time with Cato, Marcellus (a son of
the captor of Syracuse), L. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, T. Quinctius
Flamininus (the conqueror of Macedonia) and Cato's friend L. Valerius
Flaccus, as candidate for the censorship of 189. Cato by his violent
speeches procured the trial of Glabrio for appropriating the plunder
captured in Thessaly, and himself gave evidence concerning some property
which had disappeared. Glabrio denounced Cato as a perjurer, but yet
retired from his candidature. On this occasion Cato and Flaccus failed,
Marcellus being elected as plebeian and Flamininus as patrician censor.

In the next year (188) Cato acted in the senate with the party which tried
unsuccessfully to refuse the triumph to the two consuls of 189, M. Fulvius
Nobilior and Cn. Manlius Vulso, the former of whom had gained none but
trifling advantages over the Aetolians, while the latter had disgraced the
Roman name by making war without authorization upon the Gauls of Asia
Minor, and had also suffered a humiliating defeat from some Thracian robber
bands on his homeward march. Not disheartened by ill success, Cato and his
friends determined to strike at higher game. L. Scipio Asiaticus (or
Asiagenus), the brother of Africanus, was asserted in the senate to have
appropriated 3000 talents of public money when in command against
Antiochus. Legal proceedings were taken not only against Asiaticus, but
against Africanus, who behaved with great violence and arrogance. In the
end Africanus withdrew to his country estate, while his brother was
condemned to pay a heavy fine. A death-stroke had been given to the almost
kingly authority of Africanus, who never again showed his face in Rome. The
proceedings against the Scipios seem to have begun in 187 and not to have
been completed before 185.

Nearly twenty years had passed since the conflict between Cato and Scipio
began, and now it had ended in a complete triumph for Cato.[43] But the new
modes of which Scipio was the chief patron were too strong to be conquered,
and Cato spent the rest of his life in fighting a hopeless battle against
them, though he fought for a time w