And Cato did this to
disparage the thing and to show that when a man is in sport he should
use sportive ways, and accompany it with unpretending kindness rather
than with much preparation and great cost, bestowing great care and
trouble on things of no value.
XLVII. Now when Scipio and Hypsaeus and Milo[730] were candidates for
the consulship, and were employing not merely those wrongful ways that
were now familiar and had become usual in matters political, the
giving of gifts and bribery, but were plainly pushing on through arms
and slaughter to civil war, in their daring and madness, and some
persons were urging Pompeius to preside over the comitia, Cato at
first opposed this and said, that the laws should not owe their
maintenance to Pompeius, but that Pompeius should owe his security to
the laws. However, when there had been an anarchy for some time, and
three armies were occupying the Forum daily, and the mischief had well
nigh become past checking, he determined in favour of putting affairs
in the hands of Pompeius before the extreme necessity arrived, by the
voluntary favour of the Senate, and by employing the most moderate of
unconstitutional means as a healing measure for the settlement of what
was most important, to bring on the monarchy rather than to let the
civil dissensions result in a monarchy. Accordingly Bibulus, who was
a friend of Cato, proposed that they ought to elect Pompeius sole
consul, for that either matters would be put into a good condition by
his settlement of them, or that the state would be enslaved by the
best man in it.
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