rsons, too, have made friends and companions of
dogs, as did Xanthippus in old times, whose dog swam all the way to
Salamis beside his master's ship when the Athenians left their city,
and which he buried on the promontory which to this day is called the
Dog's Tomb.[27] We ought not to treat living things as we do our
clothes and our shoes, and throw them away after we have worn them
out; but we ought to accustom ourselves to show kindness in these
cases, if only in order to teach ourselves our duty towards one
another. For my own part I would not even sell an ox that had laboured
for me because he was old, much less would I turn an old man out of
his accustomed haunts and mode of life, which is as great an
affliction to him as sending him into a foreign land, merely that I
might gain a few miserable coins by selling one who must be as useless
to his buyer as he was to his seller.

Cato, however, as if taking a perverse pleasure in flaunting his
meannesses, relates that he left behind him in Spain the horse which
he rode when consul there, in order to save the state the cost of
carrying him over to Italy. Whether those acts of his are to be
ascribed to magnanimity or narrow-mindedness the reader must decide
for himself.

VI. He was a man of wonderful temperance, in all other respects also.
For example, when he was general, he only drew from the public stock
three Attic bushels of wheat a month for himself and his servants, and
less than three half-bushels of barley a day for his horses. When he
was Governor of Sardinia, where former governors had been in the habit
of charging their tents, bedding, and wearing-apparel to the province,
and likewise making it pay large sums for their entertainment and that
of their friends, he introduced an unheard-of system of economy. He
charged nothing to the province, and visited the various cities
without a carriage, walking on foot alone, attended by one single
public servant carrying his robe of state and the vessel to make
libations at a sacrifice. With all this he showed himself so affable
and simple to those under his rule, so severe and inexorable in the
administration of justice, and so vigilant and careful in seeing that
his orders were duly executed, that the government of Rome never was
more feared or more loved in Sardinia than when he governed that
island.

VII. His conversation seems also to have had this character, for he
was cheerful and harsh all at once, pleasant