But they, commending his uprightness and admiring it,
waived the penalty, considering that they had sufficient satisfaction
from the wrong-doer; but Cato offended all the rest and got very great
odium from this, it being as if he assumed to himself the power of the
Senate and of the courts of justice and of the magistrates. For the
opinion and the credit of no one virtue makes people more envious than
that of justice,[727] because both aepower and credit among the many
follow it chiefly. For people do not merely honour the just, as they
do the brave, nor do they admire them, as they do the wise, but they
even love the just, and have confidence in them and give them credit.
But as to the brave and wise, they fear the one, and give no credit to
the other; and besides this, they think that the brave and the wise
excel by nature rather than by their own will; and with respect to
courage and wisdom, they consider the one to be a certain sharpness,
and the other a firmness of soul; but inasmuch as any man who chooses,
has it in his power to be just, they have most abhorrence of injustice
as badness that is without excuse.
XLV. Wherefore all the great were enemies of Cato, as being reproved
by his conduct: and as Pompeius viewed Cato's reputation even as a
nullification of his own power, he was continually setting persons on
to abuse him, among whom Clodius also was one, the demagogue, who had
again insensibly attached himself to Pompeius, and was crying out
against Cato on the ground that he had appropriated to his own
purposes much money in Cyprus, and was hostile to Pompeius because
Pompeius had rejected a marriage with Cato's daughter.
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