346 MARCUS CATO.

ing this passion for words floving into the city, from the be- ginning, took it ill, fearing lest the youth should he divert- ed that way, and so should prefer the glory of speaking well before that of arms, and doing weU. And when the . fame of the philosophers increased in the city, and Caius AcUius, a person of distinction, at his own request, became their interpreter to the senate at their first audience, Cato resolved, under some specious pretence, to have all philosophers cleared out of the city ; and, coming into the senate, blamed the magistrates for letting these depu- ties stay so long a time without being despatched, though they were persons that could easily persuade the people to what they pleased ; that therefore in all haste some- thing should be determined about their petition, that so they might go home again to their own schools, and de- claim to the Greek children, and leave the Roman youth, to be obedient, as hitherto, to their own laws and gov- ernors. Yet he did this not out of any anger, as some think, to Carneades ; but because he wholly despised philosophy, and out of a kind of pride, scoffed at the Greek studies and hterature ; as, for example, he would say, that Socra- tes was a prating seditious fellow, who did his best to tyrannize over his country, to undermine the ancient cus- toms, and to entice and withdraw the citizens to opinions contrary to the laws. Eidiculing the school of Isocrates, he would add, that his scholars grew old men before they had done learning with him, as if they were to use their art and plead causes in the court of Minos in the next world. And to frighten his son from any thing that was Greek, in a more vehement tone than became one of his age, he pronounced, as it were, with the voice of an ora- cle, that the Romans would certainly be destroyed when they began once to be infected with Greek literature ; though time indeed has shown the vanity of this hia