simplicity of the man’s attire.  But when he had begun to talk with him about his own affairs, and listened to words full of wisdom and plain-speaking, for Cato reproved him and showed what a happy condition he had left and to what servitude and toils and corruption and love of aggrandisement in the chief men of the Romans he was subjecting himself, whom scarcely Egypt would satisfy if it were all turned into silver, and Cato advised the king to return and be reconciled to his people, and said that he was ready to sail with him and assist in bringing about an accommodation, the king, as if he had been brought to his senses from some madness or delirium by the words of Cato, and perceiving the integrity and judgment of the man, was resolved to follow his advice.  However, the king was again turned by his friends to his original design, but as soon as he was in Rome and was approaching the door of one of the magistrates, he groaned over his ill resolve, as if he had rejected, not the advice of a good man, but the prophetic warning of a deity.

XXXVI.  The Ptolemaeus in Cyprus, to Cato’s good luck, poisoned himself; and as it was said that he had left a large sum of money, Cato determined to go to Byzantium himself, and he sent his nephew Brutus[712] to Cyprus, because he did not altogether trust Canidius.  After bringing the exiles to terms with their fellow-citizens and leaving Byzantium at peace with itself, he sailed to Cyprus.  Now as there was a great quantity of movables, such as suited a royal household, consisting of cups, tables, precious stones and purple, all which was to be sold and turned into money, Cato being desirous to do everything with the greatest exactness and to bring up everything to the highest price, and to be present everywhere and to apply the strictest reckoning, would not trust even to the usages of the market, but suspecting all alike, assistants, criers, purchasers and friends, in fine, by talking to the purchasers singly and urging them to bid, he in this way got most of the things sold that were put up for sale.  Cato thus offended the rest of his friends by showing that he did not trust them, and Munatius, the most intimate of all, he put into a state of resentment that was well nigh past cure; so that when Caesar was writing his book against Cato, this passage in the charges against him furnished matter for the most bitter invective.

XXXVII.  Munatius, however, states that his anger against Cato arose not by reason of Cato’s distrust of him, but his contemptuous behaviour, and a certain jealousy of his own in regard to Canidius; for Munatius also published a book about Cato, which Thrasea chiefly followed.  He says that he arrived after the rest in Cyprus and found very poor accommodation prepared for him; and that on going to Cato’s door he was repulsed, because Cato was engaged about some matters in the house with Canidius, and when he complained of this in reasonable terms, he got an answer which