robes and garlands of flowers. Cato, supposing that
all these preparations were intended for himself, was annoyed that his
servants had not prevented them. But he was soon undeceived. An old man
ran out from the crowd, and without so much as greeting the new comer,
cried, "Where did you leave Demetrius? When will he come?" Demetrius was
Pompey's freedman, and had some of his master's greatness reflected on
him. Cato could only turn away muttering, "Wretched place!"

Returning to Rome he went through the usual course of honors, always
discharging his duties with the utmost zeal and integrity, and probably,
as long as he filled a subordinate place, with great success. It was
when statesmanship was wanted that he began to fail.

In the affair of the conspiracy of Catiline Cato stood firmly by
Cicero, supporting the proposition to put the conspirators to death in a
powerful speech, the only speech of all that he made that was preserved.
This preservation was due to the forethought of Cicero, who put the
fastest writers whom he could find to relieve each other in taking down
the oration. This, it is interesting to be told, was the beginning of
shorthand.

Cato, like Cicero, loved and believed in the republic; but he was much
more uncompromising, more honest perhaps we may say, but certainly less
discreet in putting his principles into action. He set himself to oppose
the accumulation of power in the hands of Pompey and Caesar; but he
lacked both dignity and prudence, and he accomplished nothing. When, for
instance, Caesar, returning from Spain, petitioned the Senate for
permission to become a candidate for the consulship without entering the
city--to enter the city would have been to abandon his hopes of a
triumph--Cato condescended to use the arts of obstruction in opposing
him. He spoke till sunset against the proposition, and it failed by
sheer lapse of time. Yet the opposition was fruitless. Caesar of course
abandoned the empty honor, and secured the reality, all the more
certainly because people felt that he had been hardly used. And so he
continued to act, always seeking to do right, but always choosing the
very worst way of doing it; anxious to serve his country, but always
contriving to injure it. Even in that which, we may say, best became him
in his life, in the leaving of it (if we accept for the moment the Roman
view of the morality of suicide), he was not doing his best for Rome.
Had he been willing to live (f