means they had become so great
as not to need any further assistance from them. Those who were always
seeking office, he said, were like men who could not find their way,
who always wished to walk with lictors[28] before them to show them
the road. He blamed his countrymen for often electing the same men to
public offices. "You will appear," said he, "either to think that the
office is not worth much, or else that there are not many worthy to
fill it." Alluding to one of his enemies who led a dissolute and
discreditable life, he said: "That man's mother takes it as a curse
rather than a blessing if any one hopes that her son will survive
her." When a certain man sold his ancestral estate, which was situated
by the seashore, Cato pretended to admire him, as being more powerful
than the sea itself, "for this man," said he, has "drunk up the fields
which the sea itself could not swallow." When King Eumenes came to
Rome the Senate received him with special honours, and he was much
courted and run after. Cato, however, held himself aloof and would not
go near him, and when some one said "Yet he is an excellent man, and a
good friend to Rome," he answered, "It may be so, but a king is by
nature an animal that lives on human flesh." None of those who had
borne the title of king, according to Cato, were to be compared with
Epameinondas, or Perikles, or Themistokles, or with Manius Curius or
Hamilcar Barcas. He used to say that his enemies hated him because he
began his day's work while it was still dark, and because he neglected
his own affairs to attend to those of the public. He also was wont to
say that he had rather his good actions should go unrewarded than that
his bad ones should be unpunished; and that he pardoned all who did
wrong except himself.

IX. When the Romans sent three ambassadors to Bithynia, one of whom
was crippled by the gout, another had been trepanned and had a piece
taken out of his head, and the third was thought to be a simpleton,
Cato remarked that the Romans had sent an embassy which had neither
feet, head, nor heart. When, for the sake of Polybius the historian,
Scipio entreated Cato to exert his influence on behalf of the Achaean
exiles, after a long debate in the Senate, where some advised that
they should be sent back to their own country, and some that they
should still be detained at Rome, he got up and said, "Have we nothing
better to do than to sit all day discussing whether a parcel of o