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 physicians to perform this operation for them, and that these would be himself and Valerius Flaccus; for with him as a colleague he imagined that he might make some progress in the work of destroying, by knife and cautery, the hydra of luxury and effeminacy.  Of the other candidates he said that he saw that each one was eager to get the office and fill it badly, because he was afraid of those who could fill it well.  The Roman people on this occasion showed itself so truly great and worthy to be courted by great men, as not to be alarmed at the earnest severity of Cato; but, setting aside all those plausible candidates who promised merely to consult their pleasure, elected Cato and Valerius censors.  It seemed, indeed, as if Cato, inatead of being a candidate for election, was already in office and issuing his commands to the people, which were at once obeyed.

XVII.  As soon as he was elected, Cato appointed his friend and colleague, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, chief of the Senate.  He expelled several senators, amongst whom was Lucius Quintius, who had been consul seven years before, and, which was even a greater distinction than the consulship, was the brother of Titus Quintius Flamininus, the conqueror of Philip.  He was expelled from the Senate for the following reason.  Lucius had a favourite boy who never left his person, and followed him even on his campaigns.  This boy had more power and received greater attention than the most trusty of his friends and relatives.  Now, when Lucius was governor of a province as proconsul, this boy once, at a drinking party, was flattering him over his wine, saying that “Although there was going to be a show of gladiators at Rome, yet I did not stay to see it, but came out here to you,