, as had been related,
was a bitter political opponent of Scipio Africanus the Great, and he
continued his enmity to Scipio's adopted son, called Scipio the
Younger, who was really the son of AEmilius Paulus, the conqueror of
Perseus and the Macedonians.

XVI. Ten years after his consulship, Cato became a candidate for the
office of censor. This is the highest dignity to which a Roman can
aspire, and may be regarded as the goal of political life. Its powers
are very extensive, and it is especially concerned with the regulation
of public morals, and the mode of life of the citizens of Rome. The
Romans thought that none of a man's actions, his marriage, his family,
his mode of life, his very entertainments, ought to be uncontrolled,
and managed according to his own will and pleasure. They considered
that a man's true character was much more clearly shown by his private
life than by his public behaviour, and were wont to choose two
citizens, one a patrician, and the other a plebeian, whose duty it was
to watch over the morals of the people, and check any tendency to
licentiousness or extravagance. These officers they called censors,
and they had power to deprive a Roman knight of his horse, and to
expel men of loose and disorderly life from the Senate. They also took
a census of property, and kept a register of the various tribes and
classes of the citizens; and they likewise exercised various other
important powers. Cato's candidature was opposed by nearly all the
most distinguished members of the Senate, for the patricians viewed
him with especial dislike, regarding it as an insult to the nobility
that men of obscure birth should attain to the highest honours in the
state, while all those who were conscious of any private vices or
departures from the ways of their fathers, feared the severities of
one who, they knew, would be harsh and inexorable when in power.

These classes consequently combined together against Cato, and put up
no less than seven candidates to contest the censorship with him, and
endeavoured to soothe the people by holding out to them hopes of a
lenient censor, as though that were what they required. Cato on the
other hand would not relax his severity in the least, but threatened
evil doers in his speeches from the rostra, and insisted that the city
required a most searching reformation. He told the people that if they
were wise, they would choose not the most agreeable, but the most
thorough physic