ld
Greeks shall be buried here or in Achaia?" A few days after the Senate
had decreed the restoration of the exiles, Polybius proposed to make
another application, that they should be restored to all the offices
which they formerly held in Achaia. He asked Cato whether he thought
that he should succeed in this second appeal to the Senate; to which
Cato answered with a smile, that he was imitating Ulysses, when he
returned again into the cave of the Cyclops to fetch the hat and
girdle which he had left behind and forgotten. He said that wise men
gained more advantage from fools, than fools from wise men; for the
wise men avoid the errors of fools, but fools cannot imitate the
example of wise men. He said that he loved young men to have red
cheeks rather than pale ones, and that he did not care for a soldier
who used his hands while he marched and his feet while he fought, or
one who snored louder in bed than he shouted in battle. When
reproaching a very fat man he said, "How can this man's body be useful
to his country, when all parts between the neck and the groin are
possessed by the belly?" Once when an epicure wished to become his
friend, he said that he could not live with a man whose palate was
more sensitive than his heart. He said also that the soul of a lover
inhabits the body of his beloved. He himself tells us, that in his
whole life he repented of three things only:--First, that he had
trusted a woman with a secret. Secondly, that he had gone by water
when he might have gone by land. Thirdly, that he had passed one day
without having made his will. To an old man who was acting wrongly he
said, "My good sir, old age is ugly enough without your adding the
deformity of wickedness to it." When a certain tribune, who was
suspected of being a poisoner, was endeavouring to carry a bad law,
Cato remarked, "Young man, I do not know which is the worst for us, to
drink what you mix, or to enact what you propose." Once when he was
abused by a man of vicious life, he answered, "We are not contending
upon equal terms; you are accustomed to hearing and using bad
language, while I am both unused to hearing it and unwilling to use
it."

X. When he was elected consul, together with his friend and neighbour
Valerius Flaccus, the province which fell to his lot was that which
the Romans call Hither Spain.[29] While he was there engaged in
establishing order, partly by persuasion, and partly by force, he was
attacked by a large