The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [295]
4. We see that kindness or humanity has a larger field than bare justice to exercise itself in;
5. Law and justice we cannot, in the nature of things, employ on others than men;
6. But we may extend our goodness and charity even to irrational creatures;
7. And such acts flow from a gentle nature, as water from an abundant spring.
8. It is doubtless the part of a kind-natured man to keep even worn-out horses and dogs,
9. And not only take care of them when they are young, but also when they are old.
10. The Athenians turned their mules loose to feed freely, when they had done the hardest labour.
11. The graves of Cimon’s horses, which thrice won the Olympian races, are yet to be seen close by his own monument.
12. Old Xanthippus, too, entombed his dog, which swam after his galley to Salamis.
13. We are not to use living creatures like old shoes or dishes, and throw them away when they are worn out;
14. But if it were for nothing else, but by way of study and practice in humanity, a man ought always to habituate himself in these things to be kind.
15. As to myself, I would not so much as sell my draught ox on the account of his age,
16. Much less for a small piece of money sell a poor old man, and so chase him from where he has lived a long while,
17. And the manner of living he has been accustomed to; and that more especially when he would be as useless to the buyer as to the seller.
18. Yet Cato, for all this, boasted that he left that very horse in Spain, which he used in the wars when he was consul,
19. Only because he would not put the public to the expense of transporting it home.
20. Whether these acts are to be ascribed to the greatness or pettiness of his mind, let everyone argue as they please.
Chapter 54
1. Despite this, for his general temperance and self-control Cato surely deserves the highest admiration.
2. For when he commanded the army, he never took for himself, and those that belonged to him, above three bushels of wheat for a month,
3. And somewhat less than a bushel and a half a day of barley for his baggage-cattle.
4. And when he became governor of Sardinia, where his predecessors had been used to require tents, bedding and clothes at the public expense,
5. And to charge the state heavily with the cost of provisions and entertainments for a great train of servants and friends,
6. The difference he showed in his economy was extraordinary.
7. There was hardly anything he would charge to the public purse.
8. He would walk without a carriage to visit the cities, accompanied only by a common town officer.
9. Yet, though he was easy and sparing to all who were under his authority,
10. He showed most inflexible strictness in what related to public justice, and was rigorous and precise in what concerned the laws;
11. So that the Roman government never seemed more terrible, nor yet more mild, than under his administration.
12. His very manner of speaking seemed to have such a kind of idea with it; for it was courteous, and yet forcible;
13. Pleasant, yet overwhelming; facetious, yet austere; sententious, yet vehement:
14. Like Socrates, in the description of Plato, who seemed to those about him to be a simple, blunt fellow,
15. While in fact he was full of such gravity and matter as would even move tears, and touch the very hearts of his auditors.
16. Being once desirous to dissuade the common people of Rome from their unseasonable and impetuous clamour for largesses and distributions of corn, Cato said:
17. ‘It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears.’
18. Reproving, also, their sumptuous habits, he said it was hard to preserve a city where a fish sold for more than an ox.
19. He had a saying, also, that the Roman people were like sheep; for they, when single, do not obey, but when all together in a flock, they follow their leaders:
20. ‘So you,’ said he, ‘when you have got together in a body, let yourselves be guided by those whom singly you would never think of being advised by.’
21. Discoursing of the power