Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/665

Rh CATO. five talents a book which contained the pecuniary accounts of tlie quaestorship from the time of Sulla, and this he attentively perused. Further, he made himself acquainted with all the laws relating to the public treasure. Armed with this know- ledge, he was elected to the quaestorship. The scribes and subordinate clerks of the treasury, ac- customed to the routine of official business and official documents, relied upon their own expe- rience and the ignorance of ordinary quaestors, and thus were able to teach their teachers and to rule their rulers. Cato broke in upon this official monopoly, which had been made a cover for much fniud and abuse, and, in spite of the re- sistance which might have been expected from such an interested swarm, he routed and exposed their misdeeds. The debts that were due from the state to individuals he promptly paid, and he rigidly de- manded prompt payment of the debts that were due to the state. He took effectual mieasures to prevent the falsification of the decrees of the senate and other public documents which were entrusted to the custody of the quaestors. He obliged the informers who had received blood-money from Sulla out of the public treasure to refund their ill-gotten gains. His colleagues, who were at first offended at his strictness, finding that he con- tinued to act with impartiality and upon consistent principle, sought to avoid his reproach and began to admire his conduct. By his honest and de- termined administration he replenished, the trea- sury, and quitted office at the end of the year amid the general applause of his fellow-citiaens. It is probable that after the termination of his quaestorship he went a second time to Asia, upon the invitation of king Deiotarus, his lather's friend, for, as Dnimann has observed {Geschichte Bomsy v. p. 157), the narrative of Plutarch, who makes the events of his Asiatic journey anterior to his quaestorship, is beset with numerous diffi- culties and anachronisms. In his travels in the east, he neglected that external splendour to which the Orientals were accustomed, and sometimes was treated with slight on account ef the meanness of his equipage and apparel. 13y Pompey, Cato was received with the utmost civility and respect, and this external show of honour from the great man upon whom all eyes were turned, considerably exalted Cato's dignity and importance elsewhere. But there was no cordiality in Pompey's welcome. The visitor, who seemed to be a damper upon his free command, was not invited to stay, and was dis- missed without regret. Deiotarus, upon the arrival of Cato, offered him all kinds of presents, and pressed their acceptance with an eaniestness which offended his guest, who departed early on the following day. Upon reach- ing Pessinus, Cato found that still richer presents had been sent on with a letter from the king, be- seeching him, if he would not take them himself, to let his attendants take them ; but, much to the dissatisfaction of some of his attendants, he re- jected this specious bribery too. Upon Cato's return to Rome, B. c. 63, he found Lucullus, who had married one of his half-sisters, Servilia, before the gates soliciting a triumph for his success against Mithridates. In obtaining this object, he succeeded by the assistance of Cato and the nobility, notwithstanding the opposition of Memmius and other creatures of Pompey. Cato was now looked upon by many as a suit- CATO. C47 able candidate for the tribuneship, but he declined to stand for that office, and determined to pass some time at his country seat in Lucania in the company of his books and his philosophers. On his way he met a long train of baggage, and was informed that it belonged to Metellus Nepos, who was ha&tening from Pompey's array to seek the tribunesliip. His resolution was at once taken. He determined to oppose this emissary of Pompey, and, after spending a day or two in the country, reappeared in Rome. He compared the sudden arrival of Metellus to a thunderbolt falling upon the state, but his own arrival equally surprised his friends. The nobles, who were jealous of Pompey's power and designs, flocked in crowds to vote for him, aud he succeeded in gaining his o^vn election, but not in ousting Metellus. One of his first acts after his election was the prosecution of L. Lieinius Muraena for bribery at the consular comitia ; but Muraena, who was defended by Cicero, Hortensius, and Cr^sus, was acquitted by the judges. This (b. c. 63) was the famous year of Cicero's consulship, and of the suppression of Catiline's conspiracy. Cato supported the consttl in proposing that the conspirators should suffer death, and was the first who gave to Cicero the name of pater patriae. It was Cato's speech of the 5th of December which determined the senate, previously Avavering from the force of Caesar's oratory. The severer sentence was carried, and Cato's part in this transaction occasioned a rupture between him and Caesar, whom he charged with being a secret accomplice of Catiline. Plutarch (Cato Minor,'2'3) speaks of Cato ''s speech as extant, and says that it was taken, down by short-hand writers placed in the senate-house for that purpose by Cicero. Sallust gives two well-known orations as the speeches of Caesar and Cato, but there is reason to believe that not only is the language Sallust's own, but that the fabricated speeches differ considerably in several particulars from those which were actually delivered. The crushing of Catiline's conspiracy was an important step, but, in order to accomplish the political theories of Cato, much remained to be done. Induced by the example of Sulla, several ambitious men were now aspiring to supreme power, and those who, like Catiline, endeavoured to grasp it in the disorder occasioned by popular tumult and anarchy, were not the most formidable. The wealth of Crassus and the character and position of Pompey were directed to the same end. Caesar, who had watched tlie conspiracy of Cati- line, and, if it had succeeded, would most likely have been the person to profit by its success, saw their object, and had the address to baffle their schemes. Pompey, his more formidable rival, wished to obtain supreme power by constitutional means, and waited in hope of a voluntary sur- render ; but he had not the unscrupulous courage which would have been required to seize it, or to keep it when gained. Caesar, of a more daring, vigorous, and comprehensive intellect, was not re- strained by similar scruples. He contrived by entering into a combination with Pompey and Crassus to detach both from the senatorial party, from which they were already estranged by their own unambiguous ambition. Cato wished to de- feat this combination, but the measures he resorted to were clumsy and injudicious. His opposition to Pempey was conducted in a manner which pro