A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

CATO.
five talents a book which contained the pecuniary
accounts of the quaestorship from the time of Sulla,
and this he attentively perused. Further, he
made himself acquainted with all the laws relating
to the public treasure. Armed with this knowledge, he was elected to the quaestorship. The
scribes and subordinate clerks of the treasury, accustomed to the routine of official business and
official documents, relied upon their own experience and the ignorance of ordinary quaestors,
and thus were able to teach their teachers and
to rule their rulers. Cato broke in upon this
official monopoly, which had been made a cover
for much fraud and abuse, and, in spite of the resistance which might have been expected from such
an interested swarm, he routed and exposed their
misdeeds. The debts that were due from the state
to individuals he promptly paid, and he rigidly demanded prompt payment of the debts that were
due to the state. He took effectual measures to
prevent the falsification of the decrees of the
senate and other public documents which were
entrusted to the custody of the quaestors. He
obliged the informers who had received blood-money
from Sulla out of the public treasure to refund
their ill-gotten gains. His colleagues, who were at
first offended at his strictness, finding that he continued to act with impartiality and upon consistent
principle, sought to avoid his reproach and began
to admire his conduct. By his honest and determined administration he replenished the treasury, and quitted office at the end of the year
amid the general applause of his fellow-citizens.
It is probable that after the termination of his
quaestorship he went a second time to Asia, upon
the invitation of king Deiotarus, his father's
friend, for, as Drumann has observed (Geschichte
Rons, v. p. 157), the narrative of Plutarch, who
makes the events of his Asiatic journey anterior
to his quaestorship, is beset with numerous difficulties and anachronisms. In his travels in the
east, he neglected that external splendour to which
the Orientals were accustomed, and sometimes was
treated with slight on account of the meanness
of his equipage and apparel. By Pompey, Cato
was received with the utmost civility and respect,
and this external show of honour from the great
man upon whom all eyes were turned, considerably
exalted Cato's dignity and importance elsewhere.
But there was no cordiality in Pompey's welcome.
The visitor, who seemed to be a damper upon his free
command, was not invited to stay, and was dismissed without regret.
Deiotarus, upon the arrival of Cato, offered him
all kinds of presents, and pressed their acceptance
with an earnestness which offended his guest, who
departed early on the following day. Upon reaching Pessinus, Cato found that still richer presents
had been sent on with a letter from the king, beseeching him, if he would not take them himself,
to let his attendants take them; but, much to the
dissatisfaction of some of his attendants, he rejected this specious bribery too.
Upon Cato's return to Rome, B. c. 63, he found
Lucullus, who had married one of his half-sisters,
Servilia, before the gates soliciting a triumph for
his success against Mithridates. In obtaining this
object, he succeeded by the assistance of Cato and
the nobility, notwithstanding the opposition of
Memmius and other creatures of Pompey.
Cato was now looked upon by many as a suit

CATO. 647
able candidate for the tribuneship, but he declined
to stand for that office, and determined to pass
some time at his country seat in Lucania in the
company of his books and his philosophers. On
his way he met a long train of baggage, and was
informed that it belonged to Metellus Nepos, who
was hastening from Pompey's army to seek the
tribuneship. His resolution was at once taken.
He determined to oppose this emissary of Pompey,
and, after spending a day or two in the country,
reappeared in Rome. He compared the sudden
arrival of Metellus to a thunderbolt falling upon
the state, but his own arrival equally surprised
his friends. The nobles, who were jealous of
Pompey's power and designs, flocked in crowds to
vote for him, and he succeeded in gaining his own
election, but not in ousting Metellus. One of his
first acts after his election was the prosecution of
L. Licinius Muraena for bribery at the consular
comitia; but Muraena, who was defended by
Cicero, Hortensius, and Crassus, was acquitted by
the judges. This (B. c. 63) was the famous year
of Cicero's consulship, and of the suppression of
Catiline's conspiracy. Cato supported the consul
in proposing that the conspirators should suffer
death, and was the first who gave to Cicero the
name of pater patriae. It was Cato's speech of
the 5th of December which determined the senate,
previously wavering from the force of Caesar's
oratory. The severer sentence was carried, and
Cato's part in this transaction occasioned a rupture
between him and Caesar, whom he charged with
being a secret accomplice of Catiline. Plutarch
(Caeto Minor, 23) speaks of Cato's speech as extant,
and says that it was taken down by short-hand
writers placed in the senate-house for that purpose
by Cicero. Sallust gives two well-known orations
as the speeches of Caesar and Cato, but there is
reason to believe that not only is the language
Sallust's own, but that the fabricated speeches
differ considerably in several particulars from
those which were actually delivered.
The crushing of Catiline's conspiracy was an
important step, but, in order to accomplish the
political theories of Cato, much remained to be
done. Induced by the example of Sulla, several
ambitious men were now aspiring to supreme
power, and those who, like Catiline, endeavoured
to grasp it in the disorder occasioned by popular
tumult and anarchy, were not the most formidable.
The wealth of Crassus and the character and
position of Pompey were directed to the same end.
Caesar, who had watched the conspiracy of Catiline, and, if it had succeeded, would most likely
have been the person to profit by its success, saw
their object, and had the address to baffle their
schemes. Pompey, his more formidable rival,
ivished to obtain supreme power by constitutional
means, and waited in hope of a voluntary surrender; but he had not the unscrupulous courage
which would have been required to seize it, or to
keep it when gained. Caesar, of a more daring,
vigorous, and comprehensive intellect, was not restrained by similar scruples. He contrived by
entering into a combination with Pompey and
Crassus to detach both from the senatorial party,
from which they were already estranged by their
own unambiguous ambition. Cato wished to defeat this combination, but the measures he resorted
to were clumsy and injudicious. His opposition
to Pompey was conducted in a manner which pro