Now as
there was a great quantity of movables, such as suited a royal
household, consisting of cups, tables, precious stones and purple, all
which was to be sold and turned into money, Cato being desirous to do
everything with the greatest exactness and to bring up everything to
the highest price, and to be present everywhere and to apply the
strictest reckoning, would not trust even to the usages of the market,
but suspecting all alike, assistants, criers, purchasers and friends,
in fine, by talking to the purchasers singly and urging them to bid,
he in this way got most of the things sold that were put up for sale.
Cato thus offended the rest of his friends by showing that he did not
trust them, and Munatius, the most intimate of all, he put into a
state of resentment that was well nigh past cure; so that when Caesar
was writing his book against Cato, this passage in the charges against
him furnished matter for the most bitter invective.
XXXVII. Munatius, however, states that his anger against Cato arose
not by reason of Cato's distrust of him, but his contemptuous
behaviour, and a certain jealousy of his own in regard to Canidius;
for Munatius also published a book about Cato, which Thrasea chiefly
followed. He says that he arrived after the rest in Cyprus and found
very poor accommodation prepared for him; and that on going to Cato's
door he was repulsed, because Cato was engaged about some matters in
the house with Canidius, and when he complained of this in reasonable
terms, he got an answer which was not reasonable and to the effect:
That excessive affection, as Theophrastus says, is in danger of often
becoming the cause of hatred, "for," continued Cato, "you, by reason
of your very great affection for me, are vexed when you suppose that
you receive less respect than is your due.
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