Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/397

CATO THE YOUNGER. 389 compelled to favor their unjust designs, endeavored to keep him from the senate, by engaging him in business for his friends, to plead their causes, or arbitrate in their differences, or the like, he quickly discovered the trick, and to defeat it, fairly told all his acquaintance that he would never meddle in any private business when the senate was assembled. Since it was not in the hope of gaining honor or riches, nor out of mere impulse, or by chance that he engaged himself in politics, but he under- took the service of the state, as the proper business of an honest man, and therefore he thought himself obliged to be as constant to his public duty, as the bee to the honey- comb. To this end, he took care to have his friends and correspondents everywhere, to send him reports of the edicts, decrees, judgments, and all the important proceed- ings that passed in any of the provinces. Once when Clodius, the seditious orator, to promote his violent and revolutionary projects, traduced to the people some of the priests and priestesses, (among whom Fabia, sister to Cicero's wife, Terentia, ran great danger,) Cato, having boldly interfered, and having made Clodius appear so infa- mous that he was forced to leave the town, was addressed, when it was over, by Cicero, who came to thank him for what he had done. " You must thank the common- wealth," said he, for whose sake alone he professed to do every thing. Thus he gained a great and wonderful rep- utation ; so that an advocate in a cause, where there was only one witness against him, told the judges they ought not to rely upon a single witness, though it were Cato himself. And it was a sort of proverb with many people, if any very unlikely and incredible thing were asserted, to say, they would not believe it, though Cato himself should affirm it. One day a debauched and sumptuous liver talking in the senate about frugality and temper- ance. Ainnaeus standing up, cried, "Who can endure this,