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 old 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