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 army of the natives, and was in danger of being disgracefully defeated by their overwhelming numbers.  Consequently he applied for aid to the neighbouring tribe of the Celtiberians, who demanded as the price of their assistance the sum of two hundred talents.  At this every one protested that it was unworthy of Romans to pay barbarians for their alliance, but Cato said that he saw no evil in the practice, since, if the Romans were victorious, they would pay them from the spoils of the enemy, while if they were defeated there would be no one to demand the money and no one to pay it.  He won a pitched battle on this occasion, and was very successful in his whole campaign.  Polybius indeed tells us that in one day at his command all the cities on this side of the river Guadalquiver pulled down their walls; and yet they were very numerous, and filled with a warlike population.  Cato himself tells us that he took more cities than he spent days in Spain; nor is this a vain boast, if the number captured really, as is stated, amounted to four hundred.  His soldiers enriched themselves considerably during the campaign; and at the termination of it he distributed a pound of silver to each man, saying that it was better that many Romans should return to Rome with silver in their pockets than that a few should return with gold.  He himself states that he received no part of the plunder except what he ate or drank.  “I do not,” said he, “blame those who endeavour to enrich themselves by such means,