A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

:
414 Growth of Plutocracy
His
life.
Plutarch,
Cato, 15.
political
His censorship.
Plutarch,
CcUo, 18.
thirdly, that I have passed one day without having made
my will."
To an old man who was acting wrongly he said:
"My good sir, old age is ugly enough without your
adding to it the deformity of wickedness."
When a certain tribune, who was suspected of being a
poisoner, was trying to carry a bad law, Cato remarked:
" Young man, I do not know which is the worse for us,
to drink what you mix or to enact what you propose."
Once when he was abused by a man of vicious life, he
answered
"We are not contending on equal terms; you are accustomed
to hearing and using bad language, whereas I am
unused to hearing it and unwilling to use it."
In his political life he seems to have thought one of his
most important duties to be the impeachment of bad citizens.
... He himself is said to have been defendant in
nearly fifty cases, the last of which was tried when he was
eighty-six years old.
On this occasion he uttered that well
known saying, "It is hard for a man who has lived in one
generation to be obliged to defend himself before another."
And this was not the end of his litigations; for four years
later,
at the age of ninety, he impeached Servius Galba.
In fact his life, like that of Nestor, reached through three
generations.
But what caused the greatest dissatisfaction were the
restrictions which he as censor imposed on luxury.
This
vice he could not attack openly, because it had taken such
deep root among the people; but he caused all clothes,
carriages, women's ornaments, and furniture which exceeded
fifteen hundred drachmas in value to be rated at
ten times their value and taxed accordingly; for he thought
that those who possessed the most valuable property