Plutarch, Marcus Cato
Bernadotte Perrin, Ed.

15. These are perhaps the most remarkable features of Cato's military career. In political life, he seems to have regarded the impeachment and conviction of malefactors as a department worthy of his most zealous efforts. For he brought many prosecutions himself, assisted others in bringing theirs, and even instigated some to begin prosecutions, as for instance Petillius against Scipio. [2] That great man, however, trampled the accusations against him under foot, as the splendour of his house and his own inherent loftiness of spirit prompted him to do, and Cato, unable to secure his capital conviction, dropped the case. But he so co-operated with the accusers of Lucius, Scipio's brother, as to have him condemned to pay a large fine to the state. This debt Lucius was unable to meet, and was therefore liable to imprisonment. Indeed, it was only at the intercession of the tribunes that he was at last set free.

[3] We are also told that a certain young man, who had got a verdict of civil outlawry against an enemy of his dead father, was passing through the forum on the conclusion of the case, and met Cato, who greeted him and said: ‘These are the sacrifices we must bring to the spirits of our parents; not lambs and kids, but the condemnations and tears of their enemies.’ However, he himself did not go unscathed, but wherever in his political career he gave his enemies the slightest handle, he was all the while suffering prosecutions and running risk of condemnation. [4] It is said that he was defendant in nearly fifty cases, and in the last one when he was eighty-six years of age. It was in the course of this that he uttered the memorable saying: ‘It is hard for one who has lived among men of one generation, to make his defence before those of another.’ And even with this case he did not put an end to his forensic contests, but four years later, at the age of ninety, he impeached Servius Galba. [5] Indeed, it may be said, like Nestor, to have been vigorous and active among three generations. For after many political struggles with Scipio the Great, as told above, he lived to be contemporary with Scipio the Younger, who was the Elder's grandson by adoption, and the son of that Paulus Aemilius who subdued Perseus and the Macedonians.¹