Cato

A multitude unlike themselves could have shaken even Socrates, Cato, and Laelius out of their character;

Choose, therefore, Cato.

I see Cato walking.

Cato proposed that Julius Caesar should be delivered up to the Germans for having attacked them in violation of his promise, a proposal proceeding rather from the desire to be rid of a formidable rival, than from any principle of justice.

Cato in his speech for the Rhodians, says, “Are we to prevent them by doing first, what we say they intended to do to us?

But what Cato, Cicero, Plutarch and others allege against usury, applies not so much to the nature of the thing, as to the accidental circumstances and consequences with which it is commonly attended.

For it is recorded that Galba, Africanus, and Laelius were men of learning, and that Cato, who was older than they, was eager for it;

but that no honour attached to this calling is shown by a speech of Cato's, in which he cast it up as a reproach to Marcus Nobilior that he had taken poets with him into his province — and that consul had, as we know, taken Ennius into Aetolia.

Cato, however, so departed from life that he rejoiced to have found a cause for dying.

'Indeed, Cato,' said I, 'you have set forth those things — so many, from memory, and so obscure — clearly.

Now let us see the rest — unless either you wish to say something to these things, Cato, or we are now too long.

'Have I argued too little that the Stoics differ from the Peripatetics not in words, but in the whole substance and the entire opinion?

One of the Catos was the author of a maxim, that to test the validity of a legacy we must examine whether it would be valid if the testator died immediately after executing his will.

Cato de Re Rustica, quoted by Gellius.

that through him I came to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dio, and Brutus, and conceived the idea of a commonwealth under equal laws, governed by equality and freedom of speech, and of a kingship that honours above all else the liberty of the governed.

so too the names of men once much sung are now in a way archaisms — Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus;

You would scarcely have the chance of a happier choice even if you were to seek out good men among the Platos and Xenophons and that whole crop of Socratic offspring, or if the age of Cato were put within your power—an age that bore many men worthy to be born in Cato's day, as well as many worse than at any other time, contrivers of the greatest crimes;

Shall I weep for Hercules because he is burned alive, or for Regulus because he is pierced by so many nails, or for Cato because he reopens his own wounds?

drunkenness has been thrown in Cato's teeth—but whoever brought that charge against him will more easily make the charge respectable than make Cato disgraceful.

Which of those gods of yours is graver and wiser than Cato, juster and more warlike than Scipio?

O example of Attic wisdom, of Roman gravity!

out of that, I suppose, discipline of the greatest and wisest of men, the Greek Socrates and the Roman Cato, who shared with their friends the wives they had married, that children might be begotten elsewhere too — against the wives' will, I do not know.

‘Cato will come into the Senate’—causes not enclosed within the nature of things and the universe;

for I gladly use even the word of Cato.

"Now that saying of Cato becomes more certain, that the constitution of a commonwealth is the work neither of one time nor of one man;

"This is a saying of old Cato—whom, as you know, I loved beyond all others and most greatly admired, and to whom, by the judgment both of each of my fathers and by my own zeal, I gave myself wholly from my youth;

But if they take thought for those who dwell, as it were, in a kind of great island which we call the orb of the earth, they take thought also for those who hold the parts of that island, Europe, Asia, Africa.

Was it greater than the one done to Diogenes the Stoic philosopher, upon whom, at the very moment he was discoursing on anger, an insolent youth spat?

He, when, as he was pleading a case, that Lentulus—a man factious and ungoverned within our fathers' memory—had spat upon the middle of his forehead, drawing up as much thick spittle as he could, wiped his face and said:

the Roman people refused Cato the praetorship, utterly denied him the consulship.

it was not enough for the immortal gods to behold Cato once.

it is as base for Cato to beg death of any man as to beg life.

she tries fire upon Mucius, poverty upon Fabricius, exile upon Rutilius, torture upon Regulus, poison upon Socrates, death upon Cato.

Shall I wait, forsooth, for anything to be left unscathed by malice, to which neither Rutilius nor Cato was sacred?

No one at Rome knew the green African fig when Cato brought it before the senate, to express how near at hand the hostile province now was, which he was always pressing to be subdued.

And indeed that very Cato, who would have the Greeks reckoned beyond the city, an old man already learned in their letters and tongue — the same Cato, with shoulder bared in time for his jurisprudence, no less favoured the Greeks in the fashion of the cloak.