although this is a consideration of prime importance,—but because the consciousness of a well-spent life and a memory rich in good deeds afford supreme happiness.
IV. In my youth I loved Quintus Maximus,[1] the one who recovered possession of Tarentum, then an elderly man, as if he had been of my own age; for in him gravity was seasoned by an affable deportment, nor had time made his manners less agreeable. When I first became intimate with him, he was not, indeed, so very old, though advanced in years. I was born the year after his first consulate.[2] In my early youth I served as a soldier under him at Capua, and five years afterward at Tarentum. Four years later I was made Quaestor, and held that office in the consulship of Tuditanus and Cethegus, at the time when he, then quite old, urged the passage of the Cincian law concerning gifts and fees.[3] He in his age showed in military command all the vigor of youth, and by his perseverance put a check to Hannibal's youth-
- ↑ The fourth of the name.
- ↑ Quintus Maximus must, then, have been forty-four years older than Cato.
- ↑ This law not only prohibited the payment of fees or offering of gifts to advocates; but it limited the amount of gifts that could be made in any case, except with certain legal formalities. The object of this last provision was, undoubtedly, to prevent the wheedling of men out of valuable property by taking advantage of their illnesses, their temporary loss of disposing mind, or their apprehension of approaching death.
