CATO'S LITTLE FARM. 143 



seats as domestic chaplains at the tables of the rich. 

 He could now do no more than protest in his bitter 

 and extravagant style against the corruption of the age. 

 He prophesied, that as soon as Rome had thoroughly im- 

 bibed the Greek philosophy she would lose the empire 

 of the world : he declared that Socrates was a prating, 

 seditious fellow, who well deserved his fate ; and he 

 warned his son to beware of the Greek physicians, for 

 the Greeks had laid a plot to kill all the Romans, and 

 the doctors had been deputed to put it into execution 

 with their medicines. 



Cato was a man of an iron body, which was covered 

 with honourable scars, a loud, harsh voice, greenish- 

 grey eyes, foxy hair, and enormous teeth, resembling 

 tusks. His face was so hideous and forbidding, that, 

 according to one of the hundred epigrams that were 

 composed against him, he would wander for ever on 

 the banks of the Styx, for hell itself would be afraid 

 to let him in. He was distinguished as a general, as 

 an orator, and as an author ; but he pretended that it 

 was his chief ambition to be considered a good farmer. 

 He lived in a little cottage on his Sabine estate, and 

 went in the morning to practise as an advocate in the 

 neighbouring town. When he came home he stripped 

 to the skin, and worked in the fields with his slaves, 

 drinking, as they did the vinegar- water, or the thin sour 

 wine. In the evening he used to boil the turnips for his 

 supper while his wife made the bread. Although he 

 cared so little about external things, if he gave an 

 entertainment, and the slaves had not cooked it or 

 waited to his liking, he used to chastise them .with 

 leather thongs. It was one of his maxims to sell his 

 slaves when they grew old, the worst cruelty that a 

 slave-owner can commit. " For my part," says Plu- 



